Feels like that. I paid so far only 36 pounds for everything around LFS. Considering single karting race weekend does cost me around 400-600 pounds (racing the most economy category there is)...
Anyway, if you want more real-life racing experience, try iRacing and keep all the content unlocked for 2-3 years. LFS does give you zero idea about how real racing is, as 36 pounds is hardly enough to cover just travel expenses, so with LFS you are completely missing the biggest and most important (and difficult) part of real world motor racing. The cars, tracks and physics, etc... everything in LFS is quite nice and simulated reasonably well, but the main part is basically missing. iRacing is still just game, but it's doing some basic simulation on the financial side too.