Well it's a total of 244.95 without shipping. Ballast store is in Ohio, UPS ground around 500 miles is around 25. Reflector is in Cali, about same shipping price of 25 for 500 miles for UPS ground so about 300 for 2/3 of your one light system. You forgot the bulb, an extra 40-125 depending on how you go, if you're using the switchable MH/HPS as you should be you'll need two bulbs of course. So it's a total of about 450 for your two items, plus two good bulbs(MH and HPS) plus shipping. Not really a deal, about the same price buying an entire system together. You're not really assembling a light, you're just buying parts of the system from two different stores. Shit is expensive no matter how you do it.
I'm sure there is thread somewhere on here that explains building a magnetic ballast from scratch, now that's the budget way of doing things, and being digital and electric ballasts are only maybe 3-5 % more efficient, it's not a bad idea if you know your electronics. I wouldn't trust myself. I stick with magnetic, they last forever, only a little more heat(a non-issue if it's outside your grow room), most newer ones have zero sound/vibration and many are MH/HPS switchable and can use digital bulbs(only loss is 5% lumens because a digital bulb needs a higher freqeuncy to get max light, but meaningless none the less to most of us who use a bigger light than we need) If you go digital or electric you'll save on shipping most, but to make your money back from energy use it would take 1-2 years of growing to make up for the cost differecne between digital and magnetic.
