Newbie ready for Mainland yet?!?

Hi all, I've been pottering around Help Island on and off for about 2 weeks now, so I think I should be ready for the Mainland. I've had a go at building & some VERY basic scripts, shopped for freebies, mastered flying and made a few friends too. I thought I'd wait 'till the weekend before taking the plunge 'cos I'll have more time to explore (never get long enough during the week, RL commitments etc).
I'm only using a basic account at the moment, so was wondering how many L$ I should get to set me on my travels? I'm not planning anything extravagant, just want to make sure I have enough to get any basics I might need in the 1st week or 2. I plan to get a job or maybe make furniture to sell eventually.
Any advice is appreciated. Since reading some of the posts, I'm finding the prospect a little daunting, but exciting too

I think that spending $10 USD to pick up an extra L$2750 or so ought to get most any new person off to a good start in SL. That is enough to buy some nice clothes and hair, and either a nice quality Human skin, or a nice quality furry avatar, and still have some L$ left over for other shopping, or for uploading your first textures for starting up some sort of business or personalized building work.

Don't be in too much of a rush to go out and buy stuff, unless you are already certain how you want to present yourself or what you want to do in SL. In my case, I was quite certain that I wanted to be a furry - specificly a female red fox. So as soon as I hit the mainland, I went shopping and hunted down a nice quality Furry avatar, bought enough L$ to afford it, and then worried about anything else after that. For most folks, shop around first, use the free or nearly free stuff from the Gnubie Store or Yadni's Junkyard or other sources of free goodies, and shop around, until you see the look or style that really inspires you. Make sure you check out The Shelter and New Citizens Inc., and get free stuff there and learn what they can teach you. Visit the Ivory Tower and learn to build. Check out the tutorials outside Robin Sojurner's store and learn texturing magic. Have FUN.

Your first several months in SL, work on learning skills like building, scripting, making and using textures, and making clothes. Or whatever skills you feel you can use to make a living in SL. Buy L$ when you need them, and don't worry at first about making all your L$ from in-world work. If you seriously strive to learn how to create things in SL that people will want to buy, and if you have any talent at all in that area, you'll eventually earn enough L$ to make back what you put into it. And even if you never "make a profit", it really doesn't cost that much in RL money to buy L$ when you need them. For the cost of a large pizza you can buy more L$ than you'll likely be able to spend on any one item.