Long time lurker, first time poster. Let me set this up---and apologies in advance for the length.
The reason I've been lurking for many years is I've always wanted to get my PPL. We are very fiscally conservative with two growing kids and a strong desire to retire as early as possible and travel the heck out of the world. We're a young family, I'm not yet 40, my wife a little younger, and we have a 13 and 10 year old. I barely crack 6 figs, my wife is a teacher, and we save a ton of money every year (almost all of her salary and roughly 40% of mine). I have no trust funds, no planned inheritances (I hope my parents live forever), and no plans to suddenly get rich buying Bitcoin. I'm just doing this the old fashioned way through hard a$$ work and discipline.
I started ground school a few months ago and had my first flight lesson earlier this week, just to see where it goes. I'd love to continue on, but one things that's becoming painfully apparent is the future costs associated with actually using a PPL. I have access to a 152 as a rental, but that's it. Given the family, that ain't gonna do it...so I start shopping to see what it might cost someday. If we want something that gets all four of us somewhere fun with some small bags, we're looking at things like Cherokee 180s at a minimum, a 235 if we're lucky, and a few other 4 place planes with 1k useful loads. This puts me at a min. of $50k if I hit the jackpot on a plane. We have that kinda cash and that's not what's killing me. Add in annuals, fuel, hangar, etc., pretty easy to set aside $20k a year to fund it. That's killing me and I start sweating and thinking "no way this makes sense".
So I start shopping for partners. Run across a friend of a friend who's a pilot and we start chattin. We have similar missions - kids, want get out of dodge to go mountain biking, skiing, etc. He proceeds to tell me he's pretty close to closing in on a twin (Seneca).
I, of course, will try to talk him into something like a Cherokee, but he has legitimate reasons for wanting a twin. I'm a long ways off from those reasons, but they include FIKI equipped (we're in a great lakes snow belt), redundancy, speed, useful load, etc.
Long story aside----will splitting the annual costs of a twin ever be reasonable when compared with sole ownership of a single engine? Seems like, if indeed the costs do somewhat intersect, that partially owning a twin isn't a bad way to go because of "how capable of a plane" it is divided by two.....
But then again, I've had one lesson. So let's not get ahead of ourselves .
The reason I've been lurking for many years is I've always wanted to get my PPL. We are very fiscally conservative with two growing kids and a strong desire to retire as early as possible and travel the heck out of the world. We're a young family, I'm not yet 40, my wife a little younger, and we have a 13 and 10 year old. I barely crack 6 figs, my wife is a teacher, and we save a ton of money every year (almost all of her salary and roughly 40% of mine). I have no trust funds, no planned inheritances (I hope my parents live forever), and no plans to suddenly get rich buying Bitcoin. I'm just doing this the old fashioned way through hard a$$ work and discipline.
I started ground school a few months ago and had my first flight lesson earlier this week, just to see where it goes. I'd love to continue on, but one things that's becoming painfully apparent is the future costs associated with actually using a PPL. I have access to a 152 as a rental, but that's it. Given the family, that ain't gonna do it...so I start shopping to see what it might cost someday. If we want something that gets all four of us somewhere fun with some small bags, we're looking at things like Cherokee 180s at a minimum, a 235 if we're lucky, and a few other 4 place planes with 1k useful loads. This puts me at a min. of $50k if I hit the jackpot on a plane. We have that kinda cash and that's not what's killing me. Add in annuals, fuel, hangar, etc., pretty easy to set aside $20k a year to fund it. That's killing me and I start sweating and thinking "no way this makes sense".
So I start shopping for partners. Run across a friend of a friend who's a pilot and we start chattin. We have similar missions - kids, want get out of dodge to go mountain biking, skiing, etc. He proceeds to tell me he's pretty close to closing in on a twin (Seneca).
I, of course, will try to talk him into something like a Cherokee, but he has legitimate reasons for wanting a twin. I'm a long ways off from those reasons, but they include FIKI equipped (we're in a great lakes snow belt), redundancy, speed, useful load, etc.
Long story aside----will splitting the annual costs of a twin ever be reasonable when compared with sole ownership of a single engine? Seems like, if indeed the costs do somewhat intersect, that partially owning a twin isn't a bad way to go because of "how capable of a plane" it is divided by two.....
But then again, I've had one lesson. So let's not get ahead of ourselves .
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