Rent or Own before IFR?

[Hank S]

I'm no insurance agent but I'd suspect you'll find that getting 100 hours of time in type/retract time will have as much impact on your insurance rates as an instrument ticket would if not more.

Bought my Mooney with 62 hours in my logbook. Fiest year insurance was ugly; flew it 100 hours, 2nd year rates fell by half; 3rd year, another 100 hours, no change; finished IR, got another 30% off. So IR was roughly 15% discount of first year, while 100 hours was 50% discount from first year.

Buy the plane now. Fly it a lot, learn how it performs. Get really used to it. THEN pursue Instrument training. The better you know the plane, the easier it wil be.

 

[hamer]

I chose to buy. Although my airplane isn't IFR, I can use it for some of the training. I was extremely nervous before I bought it, but ever since literally couldn't be happier. Owning your airplane is an experience that's hard to describe but extremely fulfilling.

Mine is a C120, I expected the insurance to be bad being older and a taildragger, but it's only about $900/yr. I only had ~80hrs with 35 being tailwheel at the time. The AOPA insurance agent told me the next biggest discount will be when I get my IFR.