>>4
VB.NET is a pretty common introductory language. That was, y'know, the whole point of the entire BASIC family.
>>1
As
>>2 implied, you don't need to spend money. Make it your goal to learn one heavily functional language (Scheme, Common Lisp, Haskell, ML...) and one traditional compiled language (by which I mean C). If you're going to work in the real world, you'll also need to learn Java. All of this can be done online for free, or offline during the process of getting a university degree in CS. By the time you understand at least C and Python, you'll be able to pick up most real-world languages in a snap, other than functional languages.