A lot depends on what flies you want to tie, or what fish you pan to target. Basically, it comes down to trout, or bass/panfish.
For trout, you'll be tying mostly dries, nympths and midges, and maybe a few streamers. For dries, you'll need some Whiting rooster necks, mainly grizzly, brown, and dun colors, a dubbing dispenser with assorted dubbing (they all come with close to the right colors in them), elk hair, maybe some kiptails and poly yarn for Hairwings and Wulfs, and some pheasant feathers. For nympths, the basic ones are the Pheasant Tail, and Hare's Ear, so you will need pheasant tails, thin gold wire, thin copper wire, med alloy wire (for weight), asssorted bead-heads, peacock herl (or peacock Ice-Dubbing), and a Hare Mask. For streamers, you'll need assorted feathers (or do it the easy way, and tie bucktails), bucktails, gold and silver tinsel, and various colors of floss. This will cover most basic trout patterns.
For bass, you need lots of various colors of bucktails, deer body hair, Kystal Flash, Marabou, long hackle feathers, chenille, weighting wire, 3mm foam, synthetic hair, stick-on and doll eyes, 5-minute epoxy, hot glue, and guns, and things that are limited only by your imagination. If you are on a budget, bass can, and are caught regularly, and in great numbers, on simple bucktail streamers.
It's easier on your wallet if you amass materials a little at a time. In a short period of time, you will be like the rest of us, with materials taking up a whole corner of a room (or in my case, almost a whole room). In time, you will probably gravitate towards a few particular styles of flies that you enjoy fishing with, and tying, and then you will buy those materials in bulk.
Good Luck,
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