That's great if you can design / code, but for us, un-talented lot we need to invest a bit more money into designing and coding.

I'm setting up a forum at the moment and here is how i plan on spending my setup costs budget.

Forum design - $550
Forum coding - $200
Vbulletin - $80
Custom hacks / mods - $300
Domain name - $8.88
Custom banners - $50
Advertising - $500 for the first month, then ideally... if the forum is growing well, nothing after that.

Off the top of my head i think that's everything. So yeah, i'm looking at spending at least $1k. If however i could design / code to a standard that i was happy with then it would cost me next to nothing.