You are too late to make money mining yourself with a small budget. The minimum to get in on profitable mining right now is to buy an ASIC from Avalon, which pre-sell for around 88 BTC. BFL claims to have an inexpensive mining product, the jalapeno, but they have yet to deliver any working ASIC technology, and it is highly unlikely that they will ever fulfill their pre-orders in any remotely reasonable time frame. If you order from BFL now, you can expect to get your product sometime around when the 21,000,000th Bitcoin gets mined. 
Hate to say it but your best bet is just to hoard Bitcoins, and wait until they increase in price. As long as the trend of mainstream adoption continues, the price of coins vs fiat will continue to rise.
Alternately, you could get in on the mining action by buying shares of ASIMINER on one of the passthoughs, such as BTCT.co, which happen to be selling for really cheap right now due to a few people dumping shares. Under .8 BTC for an ASICMINER share is a massive bargain in my opinion.
Hate to say it but your best bet is just to hoard Bitcoins, and wait until they increase in price. As long as the trend of mainstream adoption continues, the price of coins vs fiat will continue to rise.
Alternately, you could get in on the mining action by buying shares of ASIMINER on one of the passthoughs, such as BTCT.co, which happen to be selling for really cheap right now due to a few people dumping shares. Under .8 BTC for an ASICMINER share is a massive bargain in my opinion.