I had a room-mate go through that process, and more recently a friend finished his instructor school. It's a lot of fun, but a pretty expensive hobby. But then, if you're into Porsches, you're already ok with expensive hobbies, right?
Seriously, until you get qualified to fly alone, you're paying for plane rental, gas, and instructor time for every single flight. Then you're only paying for plane rental and gas -- still painful, imho. The basic license, of course, is just for single-engine simple-landing-gear daylight-navigation (VFR) flying. No instruments, no fast planes, nothing funky. Getting that basic license is really just a license to get the other add-ons.
There's at least one professional pilot on the board, and a few others that have direct personal experience. I'm sure they'll chime in.
Dan