Go to your local pawn shop and buy an acoustic with case - $100
Take to a reputable music shop and have restrung (steel strings) and reconditioned -$50
Buy a good book of chords - $20
Buy a tuner - $25
Buy some bandaids for your finger tips - $5
practice, practice, practice - free
/sarc
Not really sarcasm though. I plan on practicing quite a bit. Thanks for the tip on fingertip bandaids.
Band-aids are sort of clumsy sore-finger fixes.
Try a bowl of ice water, when your fingertips start really hurting, soak them in the ice water for a minute or so, and then DRY THEM OFF, and keep picking.
Fingertips grow calluses to protect themselves, so to get really good ones, fast, just keep picking. I’ve known some students who gave up on beginning guitar because it “made their fingertips hurt.”
I’m 72, been playing guitar since I was about 10 years old, played in about 20 bands over the years, owned a lot of different guitars during that time.