I live in Chicago and have found that having the rating is the only
way that I can use the plane effectively, i.e. make trips that I plan
in advance to make as opposed to running out for a hamburger when the
weather is nice. I still scrub flights for thunderstorms and ice but
my utility has gone from about 30% to maybe 70%. Last week I was able
to make an IFR flight between storms that I would never have made
without the rating (there were still showers in the area even though
the initial storm activity has passed through).

As other posters have said, you don't need a lot of avionics for legal
IFR, especially for training. It's also a lot less expensive to buy
the plane with the equipment already installed than to add it later,
though of course it's nice to work with the new GPS systems.