Someone said to me that a guy bought a twin ( seneca ?) with his old man's money and used it to build up his hours. At the end, he sent his father broke because they couldn't sell the twin as it has racked up a lot of hours.
You have to take into consideration things like maintenance costs, hangarage costs, rising fuel and oil costs, insurance (if they'll insure it and how much ), depreciation of it's value - its like a car. Do you have enough spare cash if you prang it on the runway or have a prop strike ? I guess you can always claim on insurance if you crash it but that only means that your next premium would be astronomical. If worse comes to worse, nobody will insure you because you don't have their flying hour requirements and so on. This on top of your normal monthly repayments for it. Did I forget anything ?....... maybe registration ?
My suggestion is, work with your accountant and do the sums and see for yourself what it will really cost you against paying for 500 hours of ME @ $300/hr = 150k. Against a 200k aircraft plus all the other costs. It might set you back around 300k at least.
Invest 10k, do a ME FIC and do it that way. If you are already working in aviation - doesn't matter what it is as long as you are flying - even a gazelle, the cost of 10k can be claimed against your tax liability....check with your bean counter, I'm sure it can be done.
Even better if you can justify it as an expense in your business.
D6