Your opinions on what I should do engine wise..

So, my dart has a 273 2bbl which is all stock. I like the car, and I like the mileage that the 273 gives me. But down the road (6 mos from now, a year, not sure) I want to get more power out of. No immediate plans to turn it into a drag car or anything, I mean that's for when I'm a bit older in a career and have another car as a daily driver, but I'd like to get some more power under the hood of the dart relatively soon even while it's my daily driver.

I had originally wanted to convert it to commando specs, but from what I've been hearing, that can be a long, difficult, expensive process. I've been told by some people that it would be cheaper to just drop a 318 or a 360 into the car.

I'm not the most savvy person when it comes to this. This is my second car, my first was a 2000 altima that died in 18 months, now I have this dart, and I am trying to learn as much as I can while I go along.

So now I'm stuck sitting here trying to decide what to do with the car. Retaining value isn't really all that important to me, as it is right now I don't know if I'll ever sell this car. But yeah, with my limited experience and skill (although I'll have some very skilled experienced people helping me) and with me trying not to spend too much money, what would be my best option for getting an engine that's pushing out 250 bhp or more?