Developing black and white negatives is so easy that when I learned it (long before the Internet -- DARPAnet was only a couple years old and was still not public knowledge, even to technophiles) they were teaching children to do it. I learned at age nine, did it myself without supervision at age ten (bought stuff at a yard sale, mixed my developer, came up with a way to get enough dark to load the film in the tank, developed, stopped, fixed, washed, and hung the film).
In some ways, C-41 is easier than black and white -- one developer, one time, one temperature, for all C-41 films from ISO 80 to ISO 1600. Yes, there are additional steps in the canonical process (I use Flexicolor, the bleach and fixer are separate), but kits usually combine bleach and fix into blix and need the same number of bottles as black and white (a couple water washes and/or a stop bath, same as for black and white, won't add to your bottle collection). A water bath for temperature control is the only additional equipment you need (you should already have a thermometer for black and white, since you either need to control temperature or compensate for it).
A flatbed scanner that will give you good files from 35mm and 120 runs $500+ new, but you can usually find used ones on eBay for half that, sometimes less (I've got around $200 into mine, including shipping and having to buy negative carriers separately) -- and if you already have a quality digital camera (DSLR or mirrorless) it's fairly easy to use that to get your negatives into a computer -- and free software will do everything you need once you have digital images.
Also note that nothing to this point actually requires a darkroom -- a bathroom sink/tub, laundry tub, even a kitchen sink will handle all the water needs, a changing bag (evil things, but they don't require an equity loan) will let you get the film safely into the tank. Aside from scanning or enlarging, the equipment cost can be under $100 (or over, if you want to get fancy, but even in 2020 you can start for about $70 including chemicals if you buy some of the equipment used).
If money is a big deal, and you're capable of cooking without amputations or burns, you can mix your own developer from easily available stuff, make fixer from pool chemicals, and develop B&W for years with $30 worth of dry chemistry (I've done it). Film is still going to cost, though, so generally I'd suggest leaving mixing your own chemicals for after your confidence is high -- commercially packaged chemicals that have mixing instructions on the bag or bottle will improve your confidence that the chemistry isn't to blame when something goes wrong.
And yes, things will go wrong. I learned the basics in 1969, and I've had nearly blank film within the past year (bad developer, should have done a leader test before committing two rolls of film). Commercial labs that handle hundreds of rolls a day make mistakes, too -- not many, but not none. I don't like sending my film away, however -- and the only places locally to drop off my film no longer return the negatives; I get back just prints and (fairly low res, low quality) scans, and even that takes days, up to a week, because they send the film away, too. With the equipment in hand, and after springing for the chemicals, I can do as good a job as the send-out labs, and instead of $20/roll including shipping and two weeks to get my negatives back, I can have dry negatives ready to scan overnight and scan a 36 exposure roll at 30 megapixels per frame in a couple days of after-work free time.
And, after fifty years, I'll be making my own color prints next weekend.
