Buy the cheap one first.

Student grade isn't a con — Less pigment, more filler, and that is exactly right while you are learning. The difference only starts to matter once you can see it, and you can't yet
You will waste the first tube — Everybody does, and it is the most useful tube you will ever buy. Waste it on a cheap one
The expensive one has a hidden cost — You ration it. Rationing is the enemy of practice, and a tube nobody dares open has cost far more than its price
Spend it on paper instead — Bad paper ruins good paint and good paper flatters bad paint. If there is money for one upgrade, it is never the paint
Upgrade when you can say why — "It doesn't lift the way I want" is a reason. "It's a bit rubbish" isn't, and a dearer tube won't fix it
The one thing worth paying for now — A single decent brush. It changes what your hand can do on the first day, which is more than any paint will

Bring it in — Half of it isn't needed in week one and some of it isn't needed at all. Ten minutes at the counter usually halves it
Colour lists run long — Five tubes mix most of a twelve-tube list. Buying the twelve teaches you less, because mixing is the lesson
Sizes on a list are a guess — Written by somebody who doesn't know how heavily you paint. Start small on colour, generous on white — white always goes first
Don't buy the set — A boxed set is priced on the colours nobody uses. The four you'd actually pick cost less bought loose
A brand name on a list — Usually means it's what the tutor uses, not that anything else fails. Ask before you assume it's a requirement
Say if money is tight — It changes the advice completely and nobody thinks anything of it. There is a cheaper way through almost every list on the wall

"Hue" on the label — Means the real pigment isn't in there. Not automatically worse and always cheaper — the honest brands put it on the front rather than in the small print
The pigment code — PB29, PY35, PR108. The only part of a label that means the same thing in every brand, and the only part worth memorising
Series 1 to 5 — A price band, not a quality band. Series 5 costs more because that pigment costs more, and a series 1 next to it can be the better paint
Lightfastness I, II, III — How long it survives daylight. III fades, and a brand that prints III on the tube is being straight with you
One code or three — A single-pigment tube mixes clean. A three-pigment tube mixes towards mud, which is why your greens keep going grey
The colour name means nothing — Two brands' "sap green" are different pigments entirely. Match the code, never the name, when you are replacing something

Big canvases — The shop is too small for them. The trade place on the ring road has them and will cut to size, which we can't
Framing — Not done here. There is a framer round the corner who is better at it than we would be, and no commission changes hands either way
Hobby and craft ranges — A different shop and a genuinely good one. Sending you there is quicker than pretending we have something close
Airbrush and spray — No, and no plans to. It needs extraction we don't have and advice we can't give
Solvents, and the honest bit — Stocked. An open window is not ventilation, and "odourless" means you can't smell it rather than that it isn't there. Ask what the safer route is — for most people there is one
Anything we can order — Two days, no deposit, and no obligation to take it if you change your mind while it's on its way