The early responses to your questions, which had me in stitches, make a good point. Finding products that work extremely well and, more importantly, extremely well together, is not a numbers game. The idea that you should allocate a certain amount of your budget to a certain type of component indicates that somehow all products at a certain price point are capable of similar performance. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no shortcut for the hard work of listening, matching, evaluating, and finally making a decision on a particular product. I personally believe you can start anywhere: speakers, pre-amp, front-end, etc, but I like starting with the pre-amp. It is best to start with the component around which you wish to build your system and which hopefully should be the best or one of the best you have heard, and then you wish to find others which complement it well. The fun is in the getting there rather than achieving the goal. Good luck and forget about the allocation formulas.
