That's not the really the case with Radioactive mod, where the last levels of Polymorph cost around 4000-5000$ each. By the time you get to level 9 (+ all the other powers you get along the way), you've spent a lot of cash. Tamara is not a cheap date either, if you're trying to do that in parallel ...
Increasing the logistics paygrade adds 3 pts/level (as opposed to 2pts/level for school pay grade and 1 pt/level for job-specific pay grade). This is added to the base job pay (which varies from 10-16$) before multipliers so adding even one level gives you something like 20-30% extra, with the Security job receiving the least benefit because of the higher base pay.
So it's nothing to sneeze at if you do it near the start of the game, where you know you'll work enough times to recoup it. Yes, you need 200 Logistics points but with the School influence you get each month from grades, meeting the various beginning goals and the extra 50 you get as a reward for increasing Awareness, you can get this pretty early. Near the end of Year 1, definitely.
Thanks for the decompiled file; I don't know why my unren (0.9) didn't work on it. Looks like the logistics pay grade is gated behind a logistics_payraise variable, which is not set in this file. Unfortunately, setting the variable from the console and adding a bunch of logistics influence didn't seem to unlock the pay increase option past level 1. Still the "You do not meet the fame and influence requirements" message. Any idea why ?