Well, my plan so far has cost ~$600. That also includes my latest purchase of a 128Gb mSata SSD drive and adapter.
The grand plan is to get the system up and running with the emulator and get the maps updated using....
http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1461515
At that point backup the hard drive using the methods in this post....
http://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1426773
and then at some point possibly working toward virginizing the HU and adapting it to my specific VIN.
As long as I have a functional backup of the hard drive, I can foul up but still recover.