Find a club and have a talk to the mombers, quite often there's good second hand geat for sale from within the club.

For a plane personaly i recomed a SPAD, either the Debonair, SPADet, or BUHOR, there available as FREE plans or in ARF, they fly great and are probably the cheapest and most durable planes around.
Have a look at www.spadtothebone and the SPAD forum here and at http://spadworld.net

for an engine i like the TT46 or the GMS47 both of these are great engines and they are not over priced like some others out there with the TT being the pick of the bunch for value.

IMHO the Hitec Flash5 (computer) and the Laser 6 (not computer) have to be the best value radios on the market and will do 90% of any thing you will ever need.

you WILL get 1001 opinions and can literaly spend more $$$ than you could imagine but heres about the cheapest way

laser 4 $127 from servo city
Scratch built SPAD BUHOR $20ish
TT42 $50 from tower hobbies