You may want to look at the luxury vinyl planks that are available that resemble hardwood.

HI -- True, there is high end vinyl's that actually look real nice and there is sheet goods called "Fiber floor " that has some nice patterns like hardwood and slate looks. Have you priced engineered wood floors ?, they are actually better than solid hardwood because the wood is on a stable base --- no warping and so on. Or there is reclaimed wood flooring -- not sure on the pricing of that . A cheap and pretty good looking thing to do is to dark stain and verathain the plywood sub floor . Then you can save until you have little more funds to get the wood floors you want. Meanwhile the plywood sub floors will look pretty good and once you have your area rugs down it will fool everyone . If you have to put down new sub floors , use -good one side plywood that has a nice grain to it.

If you price out luxury vinyl tile, Marmoleum, engineered flooring, you will most likely find they are higher or on par per square foot with 2 1/4" solid oak wood floor finished and stained on the job. Cork is also a good alternative. Are you planning on doing the installation yourselves or hiring it out? I suggest you ask people to come over and give you a quote plus tell you how long it will take to do it.

You can also check out porcelain tiles that recreate the look of wood floors, and are very durable. - http://tiledaily.com/category/porcelain/wood-porcelain/