Yea, seriously, spend a little money -- it's not like it's expensive.
By the way, all of my bugs are now fixed. I just created an admin account for TalkTemplate and he came and fixed it all up. As he mentioned, there are some bugs with vbulletin that require 'hard coding' fixes, and that's not his fault. My only worry now is I'm nervous to upgrade since it's all working right now
So, yea, spend the money and then email with your bugs and he'll fix it on your site.