green horn alert

Hi, Im at the earliest phase of the home cnc project, well long
story short.
What the best,user friendly,ok price,and all around good setup I
should start with, to reduce r+d, should I look for in:
software,motors, servo, controllers, wire,...blah blah blah.
I figure if I have enough imput I can weed out any mistakes and such.
Hoping for a 3 but wanting a 4 axis setup. And if you could explain
it like if you were talking to your wife. Some thing are just flat
new to me.

Thanks guys this is a awesome group site.

Jason