Honestly I'm sorta new at making decent money. Last January my airline pay was just $87 per hour. Now with a new contract and upgrade I'm at $208. Add wife's $74k annual salary and you get just short of the $300k I mentioned.
Up til now the plan was to dig out of debt. We've done that now minus the house and cars so I'm a bit hesitant to add debt to buy a plane. Our saving are lite (4 digits, not 5) but with the boys at 16 and 14 I sorta don't want to wait....
OK.. here comes the obligatory cautionary post..
My wife and I raised three sons. Our combined income never exceeded 1/3 of what you're currently making, and most times it was closer to 1/4 or less, although truth be told for the last several years of our full-time working lives it was because I was maxing out my 403b. Except for the first year or two of our married lives, before we had kids, we almost NEVER had less than five digits of savings, and were well into six digits before I even considered buying into a SHARE of a cheap Cherokee. Didn't own a plane outright until we had NO debt, including paying off our mortgage. With two teenage sons and a mortgage (meaning, you own a house where you may need to drop five figures at ANY time for a roof, major repair, who knows), five figures of savings is MANDATORY. The idea of taking on debt to finance an expensive plane because you just got a very, VERY nice bump in pay is not very clear thinking in my opinion.
If I was in your shoes (and I never HAVE been, nor ever will be, so what do I know), I'd pay off the debt you DO have as fast as possible (especially the car loans, unless they're ridiculously low rate loans), max out every retirement plan you have available, and then set aside a specific amount per month to SAVE towards a cash airplane purchase. Once you've proven to yourself you can do that comfortably, then the amount you've been comfortably setting aside to buy the plane will turn into the money it takes to use and maintain the plane, and you'll know you can do it.
One of the worst mistakes you can make when you all of a sudden have more money is to start spending it all and assume it'll always be there. A friend of mine, wonderful fellow, hit the lottery years ago to the tune of $1.5 million. He was broke a year and a half later, and now works at Lowe's. I've never made more than than $90K/year gross (before 403b contributions... that's gross salary), am debt-free, and just barely crossed the seven figure mark to allow for a nice life for the rest of our time together here on this earth.
Don't finance unless you have the money to pay cash but your CPA helps you find a way where financing is actually beneficial in the longterm. If you were a happy family living on what you made before, CONTINUE living that way, bank the rest, and THEN buy the plane.