Actually I have seen that VR helps newbies, as in most cases their hands are rarely rock steady initially, though not having VR will teach you how to hold the camera steady. I would suggest getting the VR lens and try out shooting at low speeds with and without VR to gauge its utility.
I seem to be occasionally capable of feats of exceptional rock-steadiness in holding my camera. VR certainly helps, though. I don't know, for example, if I would have been able to take this picture without it; most people certainly couldn't.
This was at a church Halloween party last year. The exposure time was 1.6 seconds. No tripod. I was not leaning myself nor my camera on any other object to steady it. I was standing, in a fairly normal stance. You can see that people and a few objects in the shot were moving, and were blurred as a result, but the static objects in the shot are not blurred noticeably.
Then, there was this shot, from a few days ago, one of a dozen candidates I am considering to enter in the current Weekly Challenge.
Exposure time, one second, even. The image looks deceptively like it is very brightly lit. Actually, the scene was very dark. Again, just me standing in a normal stance, no tripod, no other support. I don't know if I could have made this shot without VR.