Economical way to get that Instrument rating...... ?

Not sure if anyone else said this, but show up for your first flight lesson having already passed the written, and having a mastery of the academic material. Will save mucho $$$ in flight time. MS flight sim works great to help you practice approach procedures before you get to the plane.

If you and I decide before a flight that on the way out to our destination you will be the acting and I will be the flying, under the hood and on the way back it would be reversed, you flying and under hood and myself as acting, we would log it as so.

Trip A 1.5
Me - PIC 1.5, XC 1.5
You - PIC 1.4

Trip B 1.5
Me - PIC 1.4
You - PIC 1.5, XC 1.5

This is legal and supported by LOI's from the FAA.

Not to argue with my friend, Mark, but I don't think his explanaton applies entirely to your scenairo. For one thing, they're both using the flight to train for a rating, rather than 2 rated instrument pilots flying for currency. Also,while they could agree ahead of time as to who the operational PIC is going to be for the flight, it's doubful that they can switch this responsibility back & forth throughout the flight

If it's done that way I agree, however that's not exactly the scenario you started with.

I've been thinking about this myself.

Question - I think the MSFS idea is a good one, however, I would be concerned about doing it wrong and picking up bad habits in MSFS. In other words, if you don't know the rules/mechanics of flying an approach or departure AT ALL, then MSFS may not be helpful until you get an idea what you're doing, right?

Right. My personal take is that, for the instrument student, flight with a safety pilot or practice in a personal sim is the functional equivalent of solo for s student pilot. Like student solo, to be effective (and not just a way of building the necessary hours), it's a way to practice what has already been learned and should be integrated into the syllabus by the CFII with opportunities for post-flight debriefing.

On the logging question, if you're talking about changing roles in the middle of a leg, although both can log PIC, neither pilot can log it as cross country. If you're talking about switching roles, so that each pilot flies a complete leg, takeoff to touchdown, the flying pilot gets to log the cross country time as well.

I disagree with Mike, though about switching the acting PIC roles back and forth mid-leg. I don't know of anything in the FAR or any other FAA publication that prohibits a "whoever can see out the window is acting as PIC" rule between the two pilots involved.

On this we agree completely

Most of American Flyers stuff is expensive but I have to say that I bought the instrument training software that ties in with MSFS and I like it. It goes through all the phases of IFR lesson by lesson. It is in no way a replacement for real training but for a $150 I feel it paid for itself 5 times over for me using it to refresh and add on to the IFR training in the helicopter to FW.