Mo,
What do you want the gun to do?
If targets-only at 100 yards, do your irons.
If ANY type of hunting or realistic shooting out to 300 yards, just install a scope.
You're buying a longer-range caliber (mid-range, anyway), glass will extend your practical shooting limitations as well as your shooting conditions (lighting).
You've said your vision is not the best.
In your case, with that rifle you put on layaway, glass will allow you to see better, will provide one single aiming point (typically better for more consistent accuracy & faster target acquisition at distance), and will take far better advantage of your rifle's capability.
Putting irons on is not necessarily a dumb idea, I prefer them on my boltguns & insist on them for large critter defense, but I do have a .223 varminter without them & don't mind on THAT gun for THAT gun's primary purpose.
Decide on what type of shooting you want your rifle to MOSTLY do, and base your decision on that.
If MOSTLY paper at 100, or MOSTLY animals farther out, go with the biggest percentage.
In NC I don't know what types of shooting you CAN do, with that caliber.
In my limited travels in your state I've seen a helluva lot of trees & hills, dunno if you have any extensive flats where you can be hunting small game or if there's much coyote-ing there.
You've said you don't want the rifle to hunt deer.
If you want it for coyotes, talk to people who hunt 'em in your area & see what the average distances are.
If inside 100 yards, you could probably get by with a GOOD set of irons.
If beyond, glass would be the way to go.
Irons on that layaway rifle, in that caliber, would limit its utility FOR YOU.
Irons are great backups on hunts, you can fall back on them if your scope goes down for whatever reason.
But, if what you'll be hunting will generally be in semi-open country and it's not a big or dangerous game gun, the expense of irons as BACKUPS is probably not justified.
Irons as primaries limits you, as mentioned.
The expense of going both routes, irons AND glass, is probably not justified in YOUR situation.
My suggestion would be to put your limited funding on a decent scope and try that for a while.
You may discover you won't want to bother installing irons, but if you still want 'em as backups, you can add 'em later.
Figure out what role the rifle will fill for you.
If all you're going to be doing is 100 & less, you didn't need that gun or that caliber, but you certainly could get by with irons only.
If you do go with glass, while I understand your money's limited, I would not recommend anything below $150 as an entry-level scope.
I know others differ, but...
Denis