The first half of this is the wrong mindset for this game, and the 2nd half is the reason.
At any point you can spend resources to simply +1 a piece of gear from lvl 33 to 34 and you absolutely should, at every chance you get.
You can have perfect items (3/3 useful stats and 1/2 useful mods) as early as lvl 21 and that's the stuff you hold onto forever.
It doesn't get easier to gear as you go higher, it gets harder.
Example: A green lvl 20 item could have Firepower + Long Range, then you roll it to 21 and it gets Close Range. Perfect rolls for a Techno. Now you upgrade to blue. Does the first mod matter? Not really, maybe you get Critical Analysis though. You upgrade it to your level then you roll it Epic, and it gets Bloodlust, or Toxic, or Crit Stack, etc. Perfect item. Reroll the first mod to whatever else as you progress, eventually a really good T3 mod.
Now, try to do the same at gear lvl 39, when all of your drops have 3 stats already and most of them are epic. You need an item to be 4/5ths perfect to be worth keeping.
Also, don't worry about how many resources you have at lvl 50.
A CT15 gold is 70k drop pod resources. That translates to over 5 million scrap, which gets you 200k leather, or 200k iron, or 40k titanium.