Also it probably won't save you much in the way of costs I can tell you that you don't really need a monitor or usb keyboard and mouse with the Raspberry Pi.

I managed to get mine set up without ever connecting it to a screen or input devices. It wasn't too hard.

You can download a linux distro like minepeon onto the SD card on your PC and mange it entirely over the net. If you don't like MinePeons web interface you can also administer it with Putty over SSH which is likely enabled by default in whatever distro you choose.