You would probably be a better pilot to do a perfect 32 point roll with a trainer than a pattern ship. Way better.. And believe me price is a huge issue for me also. HUGE....
Anyhow, my opinion for a cheaper plane would be a 2 meter with an os 160 fx (289.00) or the supertiger 2300 (149 w/ muffler). Standard microservo on throttle, decent midgrade servo's on all other control surfaces. For battery, nimh or Nmp lithiums as they are cheap with a voltage regulator. You'd probably want to go with a fixed gear design as it would be cheaper than retracts. If you want to go with foam wing cores. You could probably get some cut here http://www.dbalsa.com/index.html Get some good contest balsa, and the rest would be up to you. I did this several years ago and i still have the fuse, unfinished.
Now you can get a 2 meter plane arf for under 500 complete. I think if you build your own design up to the arf stage, you'd probably have 300 in it. It would still save you 200 which is a fair amount of money.
So as I see it;

300 or 500 for plane to arf stage
250 - 300 for servo's
65 for reciever (non pcm)
40 battery
30 regulator
200-400 engine
40 engine mount
75 for misc.

Still have the same in it as any other hanger 9 arfs, and would be fairly competetive. You could actually have around 1000 in it. Not to bad really.
I'm not saying that I would build a pattern plane with these products, just that they are available. The supertiger 2300 is a decent motor as I have one. Great deal for 150 bucks at Tower. Servo's, servocity.com has a great selection of Hitec's and Futaba I believe. Not that I use hitec's or futaba's but they are good servo's.

I have a good friend who was flying a tiger arf in novice last year. He was very squirrely in the air. His manuvers were very fast and sometimes not controlled properly because he had no time to make corrections and also didn't have the upline power that he needed. He now has a focus from piedmontmodels and what a difference in how he fly's. I mean its a huge difference.

If I can be of any help to you finding places to save you money or for ideas I would be glad to help. After all that's what will help people back into pattern. Cheaper planes and friendly helpful advice from people who fly pattern. .

What size are you thinking about designing?

Krishlan