Up until Icarus, I edited all my projects on Sony Vegas Pro and I absolutely loved it. Vegas is a fantastic piece of software for the beginner in editing, in that it's quite easy to come to terms with. What's more, it's more than powerful enough to handle anything you would care to throw at it - particularly for fanediting. Premiere Pro on the other hand, is a steeper learning curve I found. I paid for an excellent online course to make sure I learnt it inside out, and boy am I glad I did.
I really did find it daunting at first, but once you get used to it, you will appreciate the faster workflow for sure. Even with projects where you're using loads of footage from a vast array of AVI files, it loads up very quickly, far quicker than Vegas could. The interface is not as immediately user friendly as Vegas though. Plus, there are still aspects of some of the effects on Sony Vegas which I prefer - although of course if you are going to learn After Effects as well, that kinda becomes redundant.
Overall, I really like Premiere Pro and will stick with it from now on. However, for a cheaper option, Vegas Pro is still an excellent choice in my books.