Cirrus has done a great job marketing their airplanes and the "Cirrus lifestyle". Just pick up one of their brochures. Awesome airplanes, but $900,000 awesome? Idk. Thing is the wealthy folk don't care what the price is anyways. They are too busy cutting costs and screwing their employees below them while they reap millions. Must be nice to be in the good ole boys club at the top
Stereotype much?
Most of my clients are what most would consider "wealthy," and they treat their employees very well, indeed. Treating productive people badly means you lose them to better employers, and hiring and training new people costs a great deal more than paying good people well in the first place.
Spike, you forgot that if at all possible to be wealthy and NOT have to hire people who whine like the above, all the better. Haha. But even whiners are useful if they're making you a profit. LOL!
I know at least a few wealthy people who'd rather sell or otherwise shutter their businesses who keep them open simply out of a feeling of responsibility to their long-term staff. As long as the thing breaks even or better, it'll be allowed to run.
Of course, if the thing is break-even and the Government decides it needs more money, they'll close it in a heartbeat. A common theme is that people who regularly say businesses are "greedy" never seem to say the same about government, no matter what it does. They tell Government to take more, they do, and then complain the business they worked for was shuttered.
And there's always the stuff the competition does, too... of course. Sooner or later someone is going to figure out a better way to do something, or get a deal you can't compete with. Or the market will decide it can stay irrational longer than your business can remain solvent.
To really "not care" about the prices of things, there's a break point between "wealthy" and that. Probably up around $40M but I'd have to run the math. Essentially the math is "a number which when invested throws off enough income that even the most expensive stuff isn't a problem to pay cash for, without eroding the investment".
That number also depends heavily on your tastes for expensive things. See: Cheap Bastard.
You really don't know until you have a written budget, whether you can afford your particular tastes on your income level. Current studies show that somewhere lower than 10% of Americans have one or follow one.
Go find the old book "the millionaire next door". What they found was that in most cases the real wealthy didn't flaunt it. They drove a Jeep Grand Cherokee. They worked hard owned say a plumbing company and looked more like Warren Buffet lifestyle wise. And that more often than not the Mercedes driver was living paycheck to big paycheck and had leased the vehicle. Frugality was what drove wealth.
The point is looks can be deceiving... and I believe Cirrus pushes the financing options, which is smart for them to do.
The vehicle was actually the Ford F-150 in the book. The other key was that it was purchased for cash and was over ten years old. Often owned by the business. Turned a depreciating asset into a break even one or it made them money doing work. Obviously a Jeep Grand Cherokee could also do that for the right sort of business. ;-)
SOME Cirrus owners would certainly fall into the category of the machine allowing them to do things that make them money that without it, they'd find harder to do. But probably not a majority.
Financing is just a numbers game. Cirrus (or anyone else selling something that expensive) would be insane not to accept some bank's money and let the new "owner" rent the airplane from the bank and walk away with a check for the entire price.
And here we have the #CheapBastardsClub TM
So I bet we have some millionaires next door
In aviation, you'll run into a lot of them. One million isn't quite what it used to be when I was a kid.
Even a paid off mortgage will mean someone's net worth is pushing the underside of half a million, minimum maybe a quarter million, depending on location and size of said human-box.
Being a "millionaire" in retirement is only $100 of savings a month away, if you start when you start working.
But yeah, being a cheap "bastard" helps. It's mathematically impossible to accumulate money by spending it, after all. If you spend it all as I comes in, that $100 to be a "millionaire" isn't going to go into savings or investments.
Just looking at most small businesses that are successful, "millionaire" ain't much in hard assets when it comes to even a small business. Say you owned a tiny little three airplane flight school... you're looking at almost a quarter million in assets sitting on the ramp before you even count the rest of the business. All depreciating every hour that they're operating.
This is why most flight schools use leasebacks. The owner eats the losses if the owner doesn't negotiate the correct rental rate.
Forty years from now? There will be no piston GA aviation. Everything will look like a hovering drone and run on electricity sourced from fusion reactors producing free electricity. These craft will recharge in flight wirelessly also.
LOL. That was good for a laugh. ;-)
