That "pick any two" conundrum is certainly valid.

What you might do is consider just what's meant by "good quality", and look for creative ways to keep costs down. One big way is to find options to try out gear choices before you buy, whether renting or borrowing.

There's a term/philosophy in backpacking called "dirtbagging", maybe not a great marketing choice, but it just means getting creative to get much or even most of the quality + light weight virtues for a lot less money.

This article is somewhat out of date now, but outlines the ideas very well, and certainly some of the specific ideas will still be valid:
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthre...6678#post206678

Paul Mags writes up a pretty good "getting started" set of articles that IMO does a good idea of steering new backpackers away from some of the traps that we tend to fall into:
http://www.pmags.com/backpacking-a-beginners-primer