Financing an affordable plane, or, is aviation REALLY available to the masses

[martymayes]

All I'm asking is, is aviation REALLY available to the middle class? Because The scenario I just painted is, in my opinion, a MINIMUM situation. Nothing could be described in that as extravagant. Please. Tell me I've got this all wrong.

I've always been middle class guy, I've owned 5 airplanes so far but I would have never been able to do it the way you are suggesting. While you can buy a ~$25k airplane today, you can also spend $20k just in the first year of owning and flying it if you plan to fly and write checks. Same for the second year.

If I could go back and do it all again, I'd buy an airplane before taking the first lesson.Would have flown more, had a bigger head start on leaning how to keep cost down and would have owned even more planes.