Being an early-30-something owner/pilot, I'll throw my $0.02 in the ring here. Your question jumps around between flying as a career versus flying for fun. I think you have to settle on which you want to do first. If flying for a career, then you have to look at fight training as college tuition and an investment in your future just as any college degree is. If you're looking at flying just for fun, it's a different story. I'll address flying for fun and tell you how I got where I am.

I've always wanted to fly ever since I can remember. In high school, we had a local flight school but I never seemed to have the combination of time and money to get started. When I began college, I found out our school had an Airway Science minor and the local flight school was overseen by the university. As such...scholarships could be used for flight training. Having got a 31 on my ACT and spent the better part of my senior year of high school applying for scholarships, my education was essentially paid for by my scholarships. I applied for an additional $500 aviation scholarship offered by a local gentleman and alumnus and got it. That got me started flying. Private ground school was part of my standard 18-credit course load and I also got instrument ground, flight safety, and turbine ground out of the way as part of my credits. I had a job at the university in our mechanical testing lab and was working 10-15 hours/week during the school year and 40 hours/week in the summer. This allowed me to keep funding my flying (I think we were about $96/hour wet including instructor at the time).

Sadly, I didn't finish before I got out of school, but I had an engineering degree that landed me a good paying job at a local company. The summer of graduation I got married and bought a house. This put my flying on hold for about 4 years. In 2006, I decided to get serious about finishing up and, with the support of my wife, I got my PP-ASEL in November 2006.

We occasionally rented the next year or two, but renting just wasn't as fun and tended to be a hassle when it came to wanting to go fly "on a whim". In 2008, the economy tanked and I once again set aside flying for a couple years. Then in 2010, when things started to come back in my industry, I started looking at cost of ownership. I realized for about $13K - $16k per year, I could easily buy a decent aircraft, insure it, hangar it, keep it maintained, and go fly for 50-100 hours each year. I ran the numbers by my wife and got the OK to buy. We found a beautifully restored 1957 Piper TriPacer that we purchased and financed for 10 years.

My costs are as follows:
1) Plane Payment: $390/month
2) Insurance: $125/month
3) Hangar: $100/month
4) Runway Fees: $60/month
5) Annual: $250/month (I budget for $3K/yr just in case)
6) Fuel: $400/month (gives me roughly 8-9 hrs/month)
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Total: $1,325/month or $15,900/yr

Some key things that my wife and I have done to allow us to afford this are.

1) We both work and both have college degrees from four-year instituitions.
2) We do not, nor will we ever, have children. <---This one is huge, IMHO!!!
3) We have a modest house in the Midwest where cost of living is reasonable.
4) Our single car we own is 8 years old.
5) We don't really "go out" on the weekends as we're content to either fly or hang at home.
6) Our only other vices are LEGO and Games (Board/Video).
7) We have a written budget that we review and update each month.

Now, if you can find one or two other people to go in with you on this, then you can cut costs significantly. Even with two people you halve the payment, insurance, hangar, and annual. There is huge savings to be realized there. Additionally, you can find an aircraft cheaper than what we bought. I know of a great flying TriPacer for sale in Wisconsin that is a solid bird with a mid-time engine for around $22K. That's about half what I paid for mine. Then again...it doesn't have any of the goodies I have in mine.

Anyway, the bottom line is that it is certainly doable for the average person. The key is to truly figure out where you are spending money. Kids are a huge drain based on what my friends tell me. I guess I'm lucky that neither my wife nor I want them. I'm content to spoil my niece and take Young Eagles flying each month.

Feel free to message me if you have more questions.

- Dave -