Just how expensive is flying?

Challenged

Challenged

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Challenged
Unfortunately my co-worker just informed me that he is giving up on getting his pilot's license (he's already soloed), since it is too expensive now that he and his wife are considering having a child.

The kicker here is that I was letting this person use my airplane at no cost, all he had to do was to pay for fuel and for his instructor fees...this should be an eye-opener to just how expensive flying is for most people, and if you, as a potential pilot, don't have a complete and unwavering passion for it, it's just not worth it.
 
or it should be an eye opener as to how expensive a kid is.
 
Nothing to do with money. Wifey told him 'we are having a kid, I didn't marry you for you to go out and kill yourself in one of those little-plane deathtraps'. If he spent the same money on chess lessons with a grand-master, the amount would not be an issue.
 
Jim Logajan said:
As a guess:
Cost to raise one child per year ~= cost to fly ~100 hours per year.
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As one who has kids AND flies planes for pleasure... you have no idea how far from the truth you are... by about an order of magnitude :D Well OK, I do send my kids to private school, which costs a LOT. Airplanes are downright cheap compared to a decent education.
 
Sounds like she laid down the law.

And I am betting this is a marriage that will not last. The resentment this sort of "mutual decision" breeds runs deep and over time, corrupts everything. Just sayin'
 
DavidWhite said:
What if someones parents are unlucky enough to have a kid who wants to fly? :D
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Yuh. My son has already decided he wants his license, and my daughter is "thinking about it"... maybe I should become a CFI so I can formally teach them :wink2:
 
onwards said:
Yuh. My son has already decided he wants his license, and my daughter is "thinking about it"... maybe I should become a CFI so I can formally teach them :wink2:
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That would be a mistake. What you do is buy a 'kids plane' and salary a CFI for a summer.
 
Henning said:
That would be a mistake. What you do is buy a 'kids plane' and salary a CFI for a summer.
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You know, that's actually not a bad idea... I will probably do just that when they get to the right age.
 
weilke said:
Nothing to do with money. Wifey told him 'we are having a kid, I didn't marry you for you to go out and kill yourself in one of those little-plane deathtraps'. If he spent the same money on chess lessons with a grand-master, the amount would not be an issue.
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Sounds like she didn't marry HIM at all, but what she WANTS him to be, or worse... thinks she can MAKE him into. Nothing good ever comes of that...
 
weilke said:
Nothing to do with money. Wifey told him 'we are having a kid, I didn't marry you for you to go out and kill yourself in one of those little-plane deathtraps'. If he spent the same money on chess lessons with a grand-master, the amount would not be an issue.
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Bingo! We have a winner. The same thing happens sometime with firearms, and they use the kid as an excuse, even if they are all locked up in a gun safe.

Often it is just a control thing, and once they have a kid, fuggetaboutit.
 
You can run both activities (flying and raising a kid) with a frugal mindset. Sure, plenty of monday morning quarterbacks might resent or object to approaching child raising with frugality, but to each their own. The thing that does raise my eyebrow on this thread is the underlying power jousting between male and female in the spousal unit. I agree with the other poster that alluded to it; this is a marriage that will fester in resentment. Having children is the worst (and perhaps most selfish) way of bandaging this union together.

If a child is the reason for opting out of flying, children could justifiably be the reason to end all recreational pursuits, as from that moral standpoint nothing could take precedence over spending hand over first for little golden diapers. That's just thick. Losing your identity in the process of raising your replacement is one hell of a LIFE FAIL. I don't buy this child/flying juxtaposition one bit.
 
weilke said:
Nothing to do with money. Wifey told him 'we are having a kid, I didn't marry you for you to go out and kill yourself in one of those little-plane deathtraps'. If he spent the same money on chess lessons with a grand-master, the amount would not be an issue.
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You are making assumptions. Not all women are like that. I'm eight months pregnant, and only recently stopped flying because I was getting too tired. I'm very lucky I have a great husband, who never minded me flying while pregnant, but doesn't want me lifting or carrying anything. :lol:
I'll be back flying in a few months.
 
Jim Logajan said:
As a guess:
Cost to raise one child per year ~= cost to fly ~100 hours per year.
Click to expand...
Yeah but with the airplane you can cut back when money gets tight, and if that doesn't work out you can sell the airplane. Try that with a kid.;)
 
Where does the OP say that the wife is making the husband quit? Maybe the husband decided that on his own.
 
Everskyward said:
Where does the OP say that the wife is making the husband quit? Maybe the husband decided that on his own.
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I did that. Sometimes us dumb males do what we think are nice things for our spouses only to make us both miserable later on. ;)

I highly discourage following that same path, but some of us have to learn the hard way. ;)

Luckily my wife is smarter than I am and conspired to put my butt not only back in an airplane on a regular basis but into a co-ownership where the question of "should I go flying" is an obvious "yes" so the airplane doesn't sit unused. :) :) :)
 
Challenged said:
Unfortunately my co-worker just informed me that he is giving up on getting his pilot's license (he's already soloed), since it is too expensive now that he and his wife are considering having a child.

The kicker here is that I was letting this person use my airplane at no cost, all he had to do was to pay for fuel and for his instructor fees...this should be an eye-opener to just how expensive flying is for most people, and if you, as a potential pilot, don't have a complete and unwavering passion for it, it's just not worth it.
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I need to find a setup like that for my instrument...I don't have any kids or wives to interrupt between now and my check ride! :lol:
 
Everskyward said:
Where does the OP say that the wife is making the husband quit? Maybe the husband decided that on his own.
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Then why cite children as the reason? Come on now, you expect me to believe that he became meek about life all of a sudden due to the thought of a child under his care that he's now deathly afraid to go outside and risk losing life and limb? I don't buy it.

Now, I could buy that these folks are so tight after living expenses that a child essentially needs to be covered with the remaining disposable income that was previously being used for recreational pursuits. That says NOTHING about the expense of flying, that merely speaks to the fact this couple is too tight to be having children in the first place, but they consider it a financial mistake they are morally content with, versus losing their shirt paying for flying lessons, which they would not consider morally justifiable. It's their prerrogative to consider the topic of children sacrosanct, but I do not believe the decision to quit flying here addresses the way the thread was titled in the first place. I do not believe the thread was titled in the proper context. In the context of this scenario, ANY discretionary pursuit is TOO expensive. Which is a worthless assessment.
 
hindsight2020 said:
Then why cite children as the reason? Come on now, you expect me to believe that he became meek about life all of a sudden due to the thought of a child under his care that he's now deathly afraid to go outside and risk losing life and limb? I don't buy it.

Now, I could buy that these folks are so tight after living expenses that a child essentially needs to be covered with the remaining disposable income that was previously being used for recreational pursuits. That says NOTHING about the expense of flying, that merely speaks to the fact this couple is too tight to be having children in the first place, but they consider it a financial mistake they are morally content with, versus losing their shirt paying for flying lessons, which they would not consider morally justifiable. It's their prerrogative to consider the topic of children sacrosanct, but I do not believe the decision to quit flying here addresses the way the thread was titled in the first place. I do not believe the thread was titled in the proper context. In the context of this scenario, ANY discretionary pursuit is TOO expensive. Which is a worthless assessment.
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Where does it say he is quitting because of the danger? The OP mentioned expense. That said, I have known men who reconsidered what they felt were risky activities after they had children.
 
weilke said:
Nothing to do with money. Wifey told him 'we are having a kid, I didn't marry you for you to go out and kill yourself in one of those little-plane deathtraps'. If he spent the same money on chess lessons with a grand-master, the amount would not be an issue.
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Yes, this. Flying is as inexpensive or expensive as you want to make it.

Also, I highly doubt the husband decided to quit on his own. I know tons of women who don't fly. They do stuff like this.
 
You know, there were a lot of potentially expensive, time consuming and/or dangerous things that my wife and I both gave up for years when we were having and raising kids. Most of it I decided on my own wasn't going to be compatible with family obligations and our income, but in a couple of cases I was encouraged to make the decision. It didn't fester, and 33+ years later we're still happily married (TOO happily sometimes, some of the kids have said). We're finally now to the point where we can start to enjoy some of the things we had to do without for much of our adult lives. Sure, I lost out on 25 years of flying and driving way too fast. But we also gave society five intelligent, good looking, responsible, well educated, well adjusted and prolific people to help offset some of what you see on TV.

I figure it's a trade I was happy to make. Maybe this guy is making the same decision. It's not always a matter of some controlling shrew of a wife squashing the poor guy's dreams.
 
hindsight2020 said:
Now, I could buy that these folks are so tight after living expenses that a child essentially needs to be covered with the remaining disposable income that was previously being used for recreational pursuits. That says NOTHING about the expense of flying, that merely speaks to the fact this couple is too tight to be having children in the first place, but they consider it a financial mistake they are morally content with, versus losing their shirt paying for flying lessons, which they would not consider morally justifiable.
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If we'd waited until we could afford kids to have any, we'd have been permanently childless. You make it work with what you have. There's only one way you can be too tight to have kids, and it's got nothing to do with money.
 
eMKay said:
Kids aren't expensive, kids cost as much as the parents WANT them to cost.
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That's true and untrue at the same time.

I own a dog. I simply can't escape vet bills, buying dog food. But I don't buy my dog things like a fancy dog bed with his name on it, gourmet dog treats, or a new fuzzy toy from the grocery store for him to shred.

Any resonably responsible parent is going to have to feed those kids, put clothes on em and pay for health insurance / doctor. You're also going to have to spend a little money on things like school supplies.

After that, its as expensive or inexpensive as you make it. But the above stuff ain't cheap.
 
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dell30rb said:
That's true and untrue at the same time.

I own a dog. I simply can't escape vet bills, buying dog food. But I don't buy my dog things like a fancy dog bed with his name on it, gourmet dog treats, or a new fuzzy toy from the grocery store for him to shred.

Any resonably responsible parent is going to have to feed those kids, put clothes on em and pay for health insurance / doctor. You're also going to have to spend a little money on things like school supplies.

After that, its as expensive or inexpensive as you make it. But the above stuff ain't cheap.
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Of course, but most people can afford those things. It's the people making $30,000 a year buying $300,000 houses, $40,000 SUV's, and $5000 nursery furniture sets that annoy me.

We are having a baby soon so these things are heavy on my mind, and I once thought it would cost a fortune, but I thought the same thing about flight lessons. Both are turning out to cost a lot less than I thought, but that's because my wife and I are pretty frugal.
 
I struggle with the cost on a daily basis. I love flying, and the ownership flying club I'm in makes flying about as cheap for me as its possible to be.

I do a little bit of business travel and a few Angel flights, but most of flying is just to keep my currencies and eat the odd $100 burger.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just turning money in to noise.
 
DaleB said:
You know, there were a lot of potentially expensive, time consuming and/or dangerous things that my wife and I both gave up for years when we were having and raising kids. Most of it I decided on my own wasn't going to be compatible with family obligations and our income, but in a couple of cases I was encouraged to make the decision. It didn't fester, and 33+ years later we're still happily married (TOO happily sometimes, some of the kids have said). We're finally now to the point where we can start to enjoy some of the things we had to do without for much of our adult lives. Sure, I lost out on 25 years of flying and driving way too fast. But we also gave society five intelligent, good looking, responsible, well educated, well adjusted and prolific people to help offset some of what you see on TV.
I figure it's a trade I was happy to make.
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+1 Dale. Your story sounds very much like mine. When we were having our second child, we were also building our house. I owned a Cessna 150 at the time and sold it because the whole family could not fit in the plane and I felt the money would be better spent in other ways on the family. I didn't give up aviation but did throttle back significantly. After my children finished college I bought myself another plane as a graduation present. :rolleyes2: This time I bought a four seater.
 
eMKay said:
Kids aren't expensive, kids cost as much as the parents WANT them to cost.
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You also have to figure in what the buyer will pay. Problem is they're only worth good money for a couple of weeks, then they start depreciating rapidly.
 
Henning said:
You also have to figure in what the buyer will pay. Problem is they're only worth good money for a couple of weeks, then they start depreciating rapidly.
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I've been told that my blonde, blue-eyed baby could fetch 100K. And the kid's father is a physicist, so the kid should be intelligent.
 
bluee said:
I've been told that my blonde, blue-eyed baby could fetch 100K. And the kid's father is a physicist, so the kid should be intelligent.
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You're getting scammed, healthy blonde and blue is worth a quarter mill, possibly better.
 
I'm taking nothing less than this in on trade...

Daimond%20DA-42%20over%20Islands.jpg
 
I like to tell stories. Seems the right place for the one I tell my students when I teach about cloning.

The first mouse cloning was done in the lab of Ryuzo Yaminagachi at the University of Honolulu. Yami came to where I was working in DC, and wanted to hire your friendly neighborhood Steingar to write grants for a cloning center. I went home to my crappy apartment (that cost more than my current house) to tell my Mrs., who promptly said no way. She wouldn't move to Hawaii. Island fever. No how. So I shined on the job.

The next winter in the frozen midwest every cold day I angrily told Mrs. Steingar "IF IT WASN'T FOR YOU, I'D BE IN HAWAII!!!". Fast forward a few cold months and a friend and I hatched a plan to buy an airplane.

I went home and told Mrs. Steingar that if she let me buy the airplane I'd never mention Hawaii again. She acquiesced immediately, and even goes on an airplane flight en quando en ves.

And I never did mention Hawaii again except to tell this story.
 
I got the impression that the guy was mildly upset when he was discussing his situation with me. What I couldn't discern was why he was troubled. The thoughts I had on this while talking to him were:


  • He didn't want to quit flying, but his wife insisted.
  • He didn't want to have a child, but his wife insisted.
  • He didn't want to quit flying, but his finances insisted.
  • He was embarrassed that he had to tell me that he was no longer able to fly.
I didn't want to probe too much, since he didn't seem terribly happy. Whatever the reason, we lost another potential pilot today at least for the foreseeable future, which is unfortunate for our entire community.
 
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