Personally i find myself in the same position as you.
I've been studying cryptocurrencies for the past while and I'm ready to believe LTC will be BTC's biggest competitior. Everything in business has competition and since LTC is still new and easily mineable you could get started mining them with a 2000$ setup and see a return in 4-6 months. (Obviously there are many variables to look at to get a good estimate.... but you get the point).
Right now BTC has 5.6 billion of the market capitalization while LTC is now in second place at roughly 100 million. The runner up has only 15.5 million of market capitlaization. Of course, I dont believe LTC to ever get as high as BTC seeing as it was first and most known but it will definitely double, triple, maybe even quadruple within the next 6 months as people are looking for more lucrative cryptocurrencies to mine.
So I say start mining LTC ASAP, you wont regret it!