Your questions are extremely general, and can only be answered extremely generally, which probably wont be much help to you.

1: Unanswerable, since no one knows what your subjective interpretation of "affordable" is.

2: For tomatoes? A lot.

3: Lowes carries many bulbs.

You should research about growing plants in doors. Its a nice big topic, and youll seriously learn a lot on your first day.

If you are serious about growing indoors, youll want to research both fluorescent and gas discharge lamps (MH/HPS) to determine whats best for you at the moment.

If you just want to start a relatively small number of seedlings for several weeks then plant them outside, you could probably get away with a 2 foot 2 tube T5 HO fixture and a seed tray.

This post was edited by Cherokee_ on Sun, Feb 16, 14 at 16:18

While we don't know the quantity/location of your setup, in general a 4 foot shop light with a pair of 40w bulbs will do very nicely for starting seedlings for outdoor planting.

After the seeds germinate, plan on 12-16 hours of light per day. Set the light up so that it is 2-3" above the top of the plants. You'll need to adjust the height weekly as the plants grow.

A cheap Home Depot/Lowes timer will do the trick for getting the lights on/off.

HD/Lowes will sell lengths of chains cut to your size. Buy some S hooks for the lights (you can also use the S Hook to tie off the top of the chain if it passes over a pole).

HD sells shop lights cheaply. For the 4 weeks between germination and transplant, a couple of shop lights will do wonders for allowing you to grow from seed the specific types of peppers and tomatoes you are interested in growing - as opposed to buying the transplants sold in your area.

Andrew