Wanna know how much I put into this edit? (School provided all the software I needed - hurray for film school!)
An HDTV (for the high quality picture essential to editing)
A couple External Harddrives (a 1TB - $120 (at least) NTFS drive for the main content and backup and a 200GB - $80 (at the time) (at least) FAT32 so that you can take some rendered clips around with you and play them on different formats for different people to get their opinions).
I started with a crappy laptop and a crappy desktop, then added 2GB of ram into the desktop (cost $60), then just sold both for $80 each, and bought a refurbished desktop for $500. (You're looking for at least 4GB RAM - I got 5, atleast a 2.2 Dual-Core Processor - I think mines 2.6) - For sure I would suggest having a second computer for regular computing, in my case I bought the first crappy laptop for 200.
Surround Sound (I prefer analogue to digital) - this cost me about $80.
A damn good video card - this cost me $80.
Also if you plan on doing special effects or graphic design you'll want a high precision mouse (I recommend a blue track mouse) - cost me about $70 for a keyboard/mouse combo.
If you plan on going into editing for a career, I would suggest having a PC Desktop which you can upgrade throughout the years (my last PC, I was the third owner and I used it for 10 years, and now someone else is using it) and for sure have at least a macbook pro (this cost me $1400).
Minus the laptop, and subtracting the cost of the computers I sold, I spent about $1000 dollars on the edit - you've also got to understand that that was over the course of two years, and now that I've invested all of that, I wont need to do it again for a long ass time.
Again, you might already have a lot of that stuff - also one of the reasons I didn't take donations for all that tech equipment was that I needed it for my career too, so I found it unfair to ask money for my personal work especially when no one has even seen my editing abilities yet.
Here's a list of the programs you'll need:
DVDFab - Rips films
GordianKnot - Converts AVI
PGC-Demux - Rips 6 .WAV files for surround audio.
Sony Vegas Pro 8 (for standard DVD) or (for HD) 9 or 10) if you're dealing with a PC.
If you're using a Mac, I suggest Final Cut Pro.
If you want to do special effects, you'll need Adobe After Effects (Available for PC and Mac).
For basic effects and graphic design, I suggest getting Photoshop or if you want a free alternative, go with the GIMP.
For DVD Menu creations, use Sony DVD Architect.
Hope all this helps!