I have a mate who has been around aircraft for a long time give me a copy of a spreadsheet that you can input the capital cost of said aircraft, maintenance, fuel useage, finance if any, hangarage, engine allowance, in fact every cost there is to owning an aircraft. At the end it spits out the total cost per hour to fly the aircraft from 5 hours per year through to 1000 hours per year.
What I found is that to beat the cost of hiring an aircraft I would have to do about 300-350 hours per year regardless of aircraft type. The reason being to offset the fixed costs of aicraft ownership (ie those costs that you have regardless of whether you fly 1 or 1000 hours per year).
Therefore unless you can afford to fly for at least 350 hours per year I would recommend against aircraft ownership. However, if you can form a syndicate and get the 350 of hours utilisation to help offset the fixed costs then it does indeed become feasible as the fixed costs are obviously shared between each syndicate member.
Anyway part of the beauty of flying is dreaming of the aircraft type we want and then settling for the aircraft type we can afford. Myself, well in my budget I have a fortnightly allowance that allows me to do an hour or three per month. I have not bought an aircraft yet although I have come very very close three times. But the old adage of the three f's does indeed seem to keep reapplying itself, "If it flies, floats or f&#*s... rent it".
Cheers
Nards