Look, if you're just starting out, you don't need a lot of stuff. It's nice to have a decent pair of shears, but you can get away with a sturdy pair of kitchen shears for a short while. You really need to have a concave cutter to remove some branches as necessary, so find a good pair, save up the money, bite the bullet, and get some. You don't need a Professional grade stainless steel lifetime warranty set of cutters, but they should be of decent quality. Expect to shell out about 25-40 USD. Joshua Roth is not the be-all end-all, btw. I've been completely blown away by the stuff I've gotten from bonsaimonks.com:
http://www.trappist.net/estore/merc...?Store_Code=BM.
Once you can scrape together some shears, a concave cutter, and a chopstick, you're pretty much ready to rock n' roll. Don't bother going out and buying a tool kit just right off. You almost always get two things you need (shears and a concave cutter) and a bunch of stuff that's nice to have around but that you can live without. Improvise, man! The first guy to make a miniature potted tree did not get his tools from JR.
Finally, allow me to point out that X-mas is coming up, and you may want to ask yourself whether it might be within the realm of possibility to wangle some Bonsai tool giftage. The squeaky wheel gets the grease...ask and ye shall receive...the crying mouth gets fed...