I went into the hobby shop and went ahead and followed the guy's recommendation. I picked up an electric trainer for just over $100.
It's a BNF Horizon Hobby Sport Cub S with a couple of extra batteries. It's a nice inexpensive trainer, I picked everything up fairly quickly when I took it out to the park to fly. But that's probably only because I already had a lot of aviation knowledge beforehand. I can say though, it is NOT meant to be flown in high wind. The manual says that wind should be less than 5mph, but where I live, wind is always 10-15 mph. So there was a lot of hovering, rolling backwards on the ground, being pushed around, etc. I do feel that I could go straight for a bigger nitro though. (Or maybe just a bigger and more powerful electric). But now my budget is a bit smaller. Is there any way I can get up and flying with something better with less than $250-$300?