I would even go so far as to say that educating yourself should be the first step. Books are cheap, places like this website are even cheaper (its' hard to beat free <img src="images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />). You can start saving your money during the learning process, by the time you're ready you'll have the resources in place to get what's appropriate to your situation/area.

Counting on someone else to tell you what supplies to lay up is inefficient at best, disasterous at worst. The only thing I would advocate a newbie buying right off the bat would be a weeks worth of extra food/water and a good off-the-shelf FAK. And a flashlight/batteries of course, but most people have that already.