It's also worth noting a few things about point totals:
- They change in play (by earning CP, by earning advantages and such, by getting new disadvantages)
- PCs will start slowly diverging in point total depending on what happens to them (and how many sessions they miss)
- You can start the PCs at mixed point levels - but I don't recommend it unless you're sure there won't be bad feelings.
- The point budget exists as an approximate measure of what the PCs can do, but it's most critical function is to get players to agree that they're on a fair, equal starting level.
- It also gives people an agreed upon standard to judge when things are getting unfair.
- There's lots of ways to make things unfair even when everyone sticks to the same point totals/disad limit, but point totals have the advantage of being a quick, concrete thing. They're sort of a crude "first pass" filter.