I love a low budget setup!
Welcome, Jester101! Wow, already singing and playing the guitar at 13, that's really impressive. I didn't pick up the guitar until I was 14, and from then until the age of 21 I think I wrote a grand total of two songs that didn't suck.
Well, they didn't suck
completely, anyway.
Best to get lots of advice from everybody on here, but I thought I might have some worthwhile things to say, since I do much the same thing - I play solo right now - sing with mainly
acoustic guitar and synth augmentation. And I'm on a tight budget.
As a first microphone, I think most people would recommend the Shure SM-57. It's about $100. You can get microphones for less than that (Peavey mics are pretty inexpensive, I think), but I haven't heard a sub-$80 mic that sounded good to me. The SM-57 isn't necessarily the BEST microphone for many single applications, but it's very good at almost everything.
The SM-57 is the only microphone I own. I'm getting to the point where I'd like to try a nicer mic for my vocals, but this is only after using the mic for a few years.
In the beginning, you can plug the microphone straight into your soundcard. The microphone input on your card will be a little noisy, but I would say it's good enough to start with.
Then, you'll nead some recording software. I use Cakewalk Pro Audio, but there's a program called N-Tracks which I believe only costs about $50.
That's the bare minimum, right there - a microphone, recording software, and your own voice and guitar. I'll let everyone else take it from there.
