What are your guy's recommendations on bringing Middle Earth to dnd.  i want to play dnd in middle earth without having to spend 200+ dollars on a second hand book.   

pick out everything you lov3e about middle earth and then find the equivalents in published material.

One of the problems with "D&D in middle earth" is that middle-earth is largely full of average people, and an extremely low amount of magic. The fellowship, for example, was:

4 hobbits, with no D&D class
elf ranger
dwarf fighter
2 human fighters
a wizard/fighter multiclass who's only spells are Light, Shield, and Shatter.

The choice of races are:

human
halfling
dwarf
elf
Orc/goblin if doing evil stuff because all orcs & goblins are, by the very nature of their creation by evil beings, evil.

I struggle to see how your typical D&D party can fit into middle earth without being somewhat out of place. I feel like a level 10 D&D character could probably take Gandalf, or even Sauron, let alone a party of them!

So, the main thing I ask is this: Why do you want to play your game in Middle Earth? What parts of it are important, and what can be shed to make it fit better?

I'll second this. Magic in Middle Earth is extremely subtle and kind of baked into things in a very natural way. I would argue that Gandalf would actually be a lot stronger than a level 10 adventurer, but that strength is not reflected in a flashy spell list or OP class features. He's just... really capable.

Ultimately, abuse of magic is not a good thing in Tolkien's world. It is only glimpsed here and there when circumstances are dire enough to warrant it, and we only see enough of it to know there is a lot of power there. It's supposed to largely remain a mystery to the reader. So extrapolating a magic system that works and also feels true to the setting would be extremely difficult.

A D&D adventure in that world might be tough to pull off, at least for 5e.