Cheapest route getting MS certs

Another thing that helped my co-workers and I with industry certs was setting up a weekly or twice-weekly study group meeting.  We would all read the same section(s) of the book, do the exercises/reviews on our own, then get together for an hour (usually over lunch) to go over the review questions and talk about what was interesting/difficult/etc. in that section.  It really helped us grasp the concepts, and we all passed on the first try.