Go to radio shack and buy a spool of their 12-16ga copper wire with the white insulation. Its cheap and sounds great. If your uncomfortable with that, then buy 14-16g moster cable or rocketfish cable from bestbuy. For ic's, check out www.blujeancable.com
I would not spend alot of money on cables and wires for a $100-300 system.
You should be able to find good deals on Ebay for cables, especially monster IC's. I found the monster m1000I's for $30 on ebay. They sell for over $100 in the stores.

And by the way, there is nothing wrong with using bare end speaker wire. Some people actually prefer this because its one less connection to affect the signal!