If you ask three turners for their opinions about which tool to buy, you will get at least nine contradictory answers.
Re skews - yup, using them takes practice, and you will probably exercise your swearing a bit, but they are great tools for spindle work. Frankly, I wouldn't spend the money for a grinder based on owning a skew. A grinder produces a hollow bevel - there's nothing wrong with that, but on a skew, a flat bevel is usually preferred. f they they are really dull or nicked, I might have to grind a new face on a skew using a sanding disk,, but routine sharpening is done exclusively with a diamond hone. I have skews ranging from 1/4" through 1" - the 3/4" and 1" are probably the ones I use most.
But if I were in your situation, I think I would go for a bowl gouge - either 3/8 or 1/2". You probably would want a grinder to sharpen a bowl gouge, and yes, slow speed is better than a typical 2-pole machine, but I've been using a 3600 r/min grinder for many years with no problem. Learning to sharpen a gouge, especially a bowl gouge where you might want a 'longer' bevel, also takes practice but possibly not as much as learning to effectively use a skew. The thing you have to remember is that the difference between a slow speed grinder and a high speed grinder is that a high speed grinder removes steel much faster, so using a high speed grinder means that the point when you need to replace your tools will come sooner than if you use a low speed grinder. There are two ways to compensate for the greater aggressiveness of a high speed grinder. One is to practice your sharpening skills - the more efficient you are at sharpening, the less time you spend at the grinder which means that you are removing less steel each time. The other thing you can do you minimize the penalty associated with a high-speed grinder is to use a very light hand when sharpening - that's something that you eventually learn as you acquire skill, but if you know that at the outset, you will save both learning time and tool steel. A recommendtion that you sometimes hear is that it's prudent to start the HSS journey with a less expensive tool as you are learning how to sharpen, and then move up to a more expensive name brand tool after you have acquired some skill. There are a number of HSS tool brands that fall into the 'less expensive but still quite adequate' category - Benjamin's Best comes to mind.
