If you live near a college or university, you can check with their student center to see if they have foreign language chats.
Also, you can post a notice advertising that you’re interested in a French-English exchange, where you meet a French speaker over coffee and you spend half the time speaking English, and the other half speaking French. You can also do this with tutoring, so you don’t have to pay for it. Depending on where you live, that will save you $20–30 an hour.
The best way to learn a language is to practice speaking it. That’s more important than learning grammar rules. Focus on acquiring vocabulary and fluency, and proper usage of verb tenses and prepositions, etc, will follow.
Oh, and you can easily find grammar reference books, like “French for English speakers” as well as vocabulary flash cards on your own (or you can make them!). If you’re self-motivated and have a language partner, you really don’t need to shell out the big bucks.
Oh, one more idea: you can look into auditing classes at a local university, or signing up for a course at a community college.