Hello
@grndkntrl and welcome.
If your budget is tight think carefully about the habby purchases. Needles and pins are consumables and you have to have them. Cutting quipment is also essential but you don't need shears
and a rotary cutter to start with.
There are two schools of thought about rotary cutters - some people love them and use one for almost all cutting out, others much prefer the conventional shears (or scissors).
I am in the shearrs/scissors camp. For cutting out garment pieces I always use shears - and I flinch when I see contestants on GBSB using rotary cutters and fear for their fingers especially when they are cutting towards themselves!
I also think that scissors are more accurate when cutting out small fiddly pieces. I do use a rotary cutter but only with an acrylic ruler when cutting strips and squares for patchwork. I am also one who pins pattern pieces to the fabric rather than hoping that weights and gravity will keep the pattern pieces where they need to be.