I do agree to an extent with Badger. IF this is your main hobby, Always buy the best you can afford in the first place, if you cant quite afford it, SAve for a little longer, Buy once, Not Twice. Good equipment improves the enjoyment of the hobby, Wether it be the Nitro Engine, The Radio Gear or even the Tools. I recently spent £100+ om EDS Tools. Sure, I could have worked on my cars with A set of allen keys from the pound shop. These would have un done screws, But the EDS Tools are so much easier to work with, I dont round off screws, I dont round off tools, This makes working on my R/CS easier, and faster, Which makes the hobby more enjoyable.
Alot of people are asking in the electric forum about upgrading to higher capacity Nimh's. They have got a poor charger/battery combo with their RTR, And more often than not have enough in their budget to go Lipo, or even just a bit more. IF they continue with this hobby, They will at one point go Lipo, And will have to uprade again, So they are in fact spending more cash than they would have in the long run
AS for getting a Good Radio System, Its a great investment especially if its multi memory. I know alot of cars are RTR these days, But If you sell the RX & TX combo, you can usually make enough to buy an additional reciever for your 2.4HZ and add it to the model memory.
I always do this, In Fact im looking at a Slash 4x4, That comes with a 2.4GHZ system, But ill still pull it out, Sell it and put a Reciever in it and use it with my DX3s
Obviously, This cannot be the case for everyone, Everyone has a budget and everyone has different expendable incomes, I live at home and earn a good wage, I have a fair amount to spend on R/Cs, but not everyone is so fortunate. Especially if they are at School/Student/Homeowner/Have Kids.
This is a hobby, Nothing is necessary, They are (unfortuantely) more important bills to cover before out hobbies. Id bu ya Slash 4x4 tomorrow, Btu I know I need to pay around £800 out the next 2 months, And This must take priority.