There are a lot of different spices out there. You will want to stock your kitchen with a variety of different spices. As spices can be expensive, you may not want to run out and purchase them all at once. Some spices you can buy in bulk, and at some places you can buy bulk spices.
Conventional wisdom has it that spices begin to lose their flavor with age.
However, I've let some spices sit for a couple of years, with minimal loss of flavor. Therefore, I say buy bulk and save some money. The question then becomes which spices to buy first. Below is a list spices which I view as immediate necessities. These are listed in decreasing order of importance.