Hi A1.
If you own your own a/c the fixed costs can be horrific - Maintenance, Hangarage and Insurance are the biggies.
To give you a feel; on my CofA aircraft the insurance is c.£1.5K/yr. My hangarage is pretty reasonable but if you are at an established airfield it will be about £2-3K/yr. Outside parking will be cheaper but there is an impact on the airframe and on damp avionics. Maintenance can be a killer. I budget around £3-£4K/yr for maintenance but my last annual was £6K as the a/c needed some unplanned work
and this is for what I consider to be a pretty well kept aircraft. If you're looking to pay only £13K for an aircraft it's going to be old and tired and chances are you're going to be looking at some big bills down the road.
As a newbie to a/c ownership I would go with a group everytime. That way you can learn the ropes without too much outlay. With group ownership fixed costs are shared and usually take the form of a monthly charge.
OK, so you don't have the pleasure of knowing it's all yours but you can sleep at night knowing that most of the costs are already covered (if the group is well run) and you're only paying a fraction if something goes bang. Also most group aircraft are not used as much as you would think so availability is not usually a problem.
Rateone