Hilarious - this is literally my FSX experience. Got back into it a few weeks ago, bought a yoke and rudders, dusted off FSX which I bought for £4 ages ago in a Steam sale, tried X-Plane (computer not powerful enough), looked at PSD and though they are joking right - $US200 and they tell you it's not a consumer flight sim ...
Anyway, having lots of fun tweaking, discovering FSUIPC and Chase Plane (both amazing fun) and bought an A2A C182 (wow, difficult!), and the DHC-2 from MilViz, but spending most of my time learning how to fly in Carenado's C152 from Steam (great little plane ... very forgiving). In between tweaking (75% of my time), I have finally managed to do a pattern, touch and goes and now the table my yoke is bolted too doesn't shake as I try to land, it barely moves :-)
Next up is ratching up the realism on the planes and one day flying from my (virtual) home base of Homer Alaska, to Ballarat in Australia where I grew up. Figure that'll keep me going for a good decade!