Your right re the saving the sim will offer, I have crashed hundreds of VERY expensive heli's and aircraft within my sim, and it has not cost me another cent!

IMO - the thing to take into account and remember with a sim is that it is designed as a LEARNING TOOL - and not a game (it's easy to make that mistake and just bash) .... try not to get caught up doing anything fancy, just take the basic trainer, practice take-off's, landings and basic circuits, figure 8's etc till you can do them in your sleep. There are some training programs within that should help (least there are for heli's)
Then start messing around with adding wind, it'll start shaking up things and adding that real world feeling before you try to teach yourself how to deal with tip stalls etc. only when your happy should you look to learn the same with the more high performance aircraft.
Overall, understand what you want/need to learn from the sim, get your thumb memory trained, and you'll be fine with that first trainer - or whatever you decide to get.

My sim has saved me from many crashes, and has been one of the best investments I ever made within this hobby, enjoy and welcome to the addiction (I sold all my cars yachts etc once I got the hang of my first heli)