Man, my old boss always said pancake batter and he wasn't wrong either.

A cheap meter is fine if you know what you are doing with it and you cross check it against a known good source now and then. The drift you saw could have been a lead issue, a low battery, or just temp changes messing with a cheap circuit, not proof that every budget meter is junk. Plenty of guys run a $70 meter for years on basic volts and ohms and never have a problem, they just don't trust it for anything where being off by a tenth would cost them. The Fluke is nice but a lot of what you paid for is the name and the warranty, not some magic accuracy that a decent mid range meter can't match. What actually caught your wiring ghost was you trusting one tool without backing it up, and you can make that same mistake with a Fluke if you get lazy. Plenty of shops have calibration benches for a reason, and it isn't because only cheap meters can be wrong.