Yeah, in that situation I'd hold on tight to the few pennies coming in, I hope the situation gets better soon!
If USB is proving difficult why not use the good old UART aproach? It's straight forward and just plain works (so does USB of course - once you get to that point, atleast that's what I've been told - never been able to get there myself...).

If you're on an old version of PBP make sure it supports any new PIC you might choose. I can't seem to find the device list for 2.6 on MELABS site but I know it's there somewhere. I think the 46K22 is supported in 2.6 but I'm not entirely sure.

As for the PICkit3, there are "bundles" available where you get a little demoboard together with the actual PICKit3 device programmer/debugger. Those bundles costs more a bit more but the bare programmer/debugger (Microchip part number PG164130) is $49 from Digikey or $45 from Microchip Direct - half that for a clone on EBAY.

I'm afraid I can't help with MikroBasic (is that the Mikro Electronika compiler or what is it?) or the software for the programmer.