Welcome!
Hi there, and welcome to the hobby. I'll reccomend a few things to
do and give steps to accomplish them.
1. Make contact with local hams in you area. I see you are in Washington,
so if you do a google search for "<your city here, or the nearest decent sized city> amateur radio club" you should find something. If not, contact your county's civil defense/office of emergency preparedness office (that's what I did many years ago), or red cross chapter, and they can almost certainly put you in touch with a ham or two.
2. Now days, you shouldn't have to pay a dime for ham exam study materials as they are readily available on the net for free (testing sessions usually charge a small fee for the actual ham exam). Eham.net (on the left column) has the question pools for the three ham liscenses as well as practice exams. You might also check out
http://www.hello-radio.org/ which is a web site of the ARRL (American Radio Relay League), the largest US ham organization. There website also has a handy utility that
can help you locate hams in your area.
3. Carefully consider your first radio purchase. For many, this is often a 2m or dual band handheld or mobile radio. For most folks, a 2 meter (144mhz)/ 70cm (440mhz) radio is a good choice. Although these days, many might choose one of the new all in one hf/vhf/uhf/6m rigs like the ft857d, ic706mkII and the IC7000. Eham.net has reviews on many such rigs.
4. There is no need to wait to be liscenced to buy your first ham rig, but there is a need to wait to transmit with it! Listening is highly encoruaged. Listening to hams on the local repeaters can give you a feel for how they communicate (hopefully they are courteous and efficient communicators).
If you want any further information do not hesitate to contact/PM me.
Jean B.