A one-off shoot is about what you can improvise. A desk you record from every week is about what stays put, what stays out of the frame, and what you never have to rebuild.
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A permanent home desk teleprompter setup works best with the display mounted on a monitor arm directly below or in front of the webcam, front-facing light rather than an overhead room light, and cables routed so nothing needs re-plugging between sessions. This differs from a one-off cheap setup mainly in what stays fixed versus what gets improvised each time.
If you are filming once, the goal is get anything working. If you are recording from the same desk weekly, the goal changes: nothing should need re-plugging, re-propping, or re-aiming between sessions. That is a mounting and layout problem more than a budget one, and it is worth solving properly once rather than rebuilding a temporary rig every time you sit down.
If your desk already has a spare monitor, put it on an articulating arm and pull it up so the top edge sits right beneath your camera. This is the best permanent setup most people already have the parts for, and it costs nothing beyond an arm if you do not have one.
A cheap articulating phone or tablet clamp mounted to the desk edge holds a device at a fixed height and angle. Set it once and it stays there between sessions, which a stack of books never does.
If the laptop is both your camera and your only screen, put it on a stand so the webcam sits at eye level, and accept that the script has to share the same screen as your camera feed rather than sitting on a separate one. A camera-behind-script setup handles this well, since it does not need a second device at all.
A single overhead room light is the most common home-desk mistake, because it lights the top of your head and puts shadows under your eyes exactly where a camera notices them most. For a permanent setup, put a light in front of you at roughly your eye level or slightly above, angled down a little. A cheap desk lamp with a warm bulb, angled correctly, beats an expensive ring light aimed badly.
If your desk faces a window, that is often your best light for free. Face it, do not sit with your back to it, and the light does most of the work on its own.
These are the things that take real time to get right and cost you nothing to leave set. Mark the monitor arm's position with a bit of tape on the desk if it is prone to drifting.
These change per script and per mood, and a prompter that remembers your last settings across sessions means you are not resetting them every time anyway.
A monitor arm holding a spare screen or tablet directly under the webcam is the most reliable permanent setup. It stays at a fixed height and angle between sessions, unlike a propped phone that has to be reset each time.
A light in front of you at roughly eye level, angled down slightly, rather than a single overhead room light. A window you are facing, rather than one behind you, is often the best free option.
A one-off setup is about improvising with what you have for a single shoot. A permanent home desk setup is about mounting things so they stay put and never need rebuilding between sessions — it is a layout problem, not a budget one.
It helps but is not required. A laptop raised to eye level with a camera-behind-script setup works without any second screen at all, since the script and your camera feed share the same display.