I did the same thing as you starting out.  I set up wallets, joined a pool, and realized it would take a week to make .01 BTC.  That was about 3 or 4 years ago.  I went out and built a 2 GPU rig for about 1100 and then also got a small 6 Gh/s butterfly labs ASIC miner.  In hindsight I would have been 20 times better off if I had just taken that money and bought coins at $60.  I suspect that mining big name coins is now the realm of pros and not hobbyists.  Once ASICS hit the market it was a constant battle to get the newest/fastest gear first so that you could mine back your investment plus a little profit before it became e-waste.  Added risk was that the ASIC you got burned out right away or in a short period of time.  No warranties.  A friend of a friend had racks of GPU's and about 20k worth of burned out ASICS from China.