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Talking money is not good approach for starting amateur radio- astronomy activities.
First, interested person must know exactly what it is all about.
Radio-waves can not bee seen, heard or touched.
So, the solid knowledge of physics and electronics is essential, to be able to interpret the results (which will be basically the power of more or less white noise over certain frequency band.
If someone relies on what is commercially available, she/he will not get very far, it will remain in the realm of commercial, will end up on the shelf or in garage or shed and it will not be even appreciated by others.. because at least you can show your friends and associates the nice pictures you have taken with expensive and shiny telescope, you can even show them the real objects in the super-wide-angle eyepiece during the night observing sessions, buy just try the same thing with graphs and numbers (and this is what is coming out of your radio-telescope back end).
Being a professional RF engineer I know very well there are receivers and "receivers" and what can be done to tune one properly for particular use.
And this does nor require a great deal of money.. just expertise. Even antennas can be built (and they have to, btw, you will want to receive emissions from outer space in frequency bands that are not used for commercial purposes (because in them there is nothing to receive anyway, due to radio-pollution).. so antennas will not be available commercially.
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