Posting this as another comparison between the price of a flying airplane, and whatever the price of the airplane the OP’s husband is considering is.
1960 Piper Tri-Pacer on eBay. The bidding starts at $14,000. No bids yet, and there’s a reserve. It does have the sealed struts.
Only 60 hours since 2008? Get a thorough inspection before you even bid.
But still means knowing it. So pointing out such obvious things would be mere scolding rather than revealing something to the person.
If you read the rest of my post you will learn what actually happened.
$5,000 a year is a reasonable amount a person can be paying a year to maintain a private plane that isn’t for commercial use, and limits his flying to say, 70 or so hours a year. That includes fuel, insurance, and hangar costs, along with annual inspections, and hopefully no serious equipment failures. For commercial use, insurance goes up considerably. If I heard my friend right, he paid out $15,000 last year for insurance on his old Cessna 172 that he rents out by the hour to the general public.
Fuel costs alone run about $40.00 an hour figuring 8 gph fuel burn, and at $5.00 a gallon for 100LL which would be cheap to get it at that around most places in the country. Some go with mogas and saves them quite a bit. I was doing that with mine on one tank until they started putting ethanol blends in it. Some still burn that too, but you have to check your equipment to make sure it doesn’t ruin certain fuel rings and hoses, like in your tank, mechanical and electrical fuel pumps, carb, etc.
It does look nice. There will be plenty of sniping bids come in at the last minute, I’m sure. I don’t think he mentions compression, I’d want to take a good look at those numbers.
I sent my husband a link to this thread. He’s not a message board kind of person and doesn’t (yet?) have an account here, but I thought he’d be interested in a lot of what’s been said, especially the technical jargon that I can’t translate.
Oh, and the deposit has been paid on the plane 
So… How goes the purchase?
Well! I’m now officially married to a General Aviation Pilot (AVM, I think is the term). He passed his flight test today, got the oral done 2 weeks ago. The plane has been bought and is with the mechanic getting a new prop, struts, and general overhaul.
I am actually pleased for him. A bit terrified, but pleased. He started this less than a year ago and has busted his butt to get all the training and jump through all the required hoops. Among other things, when he’s happy he’s a whole lot easier to live with! 
Oh! This is the actual plane with a previous owner in it. It’s kinda cute, for a plane 
Cool! I hope it all goes well for both of you.
Not quite. You should already have checked for a dead mag before you did your runup because going to one mag and having the engine quit then going back to a working mag at relatively high power will make a humongous “BANG” as a bunch of unburnt fuel gets ignited in the cylinders. During the run-up you’re just checking the RPM drop on the mags that you already know are basically functional. Also if you have no RPM change between “BOTH” and one mag then you actually have a live mag, one that isn’t being turned off correctly by the switch.
After start you check for a dead mag by going BOTH L R BOTH at idle power. If you have a dead mag you won’t risk blowing up the engine doing this. During the run-up you check the power from each mag. Then finally just prior to engine shutdown you check for a live mag by going to OFF briefly and checking the engine cuts out. You then shut the engine down in the normal manner–using the mixture control (if it has one.)
The acceptable mag drop depends on the engine and the flight manual will state what it is. It is also performed at different RPMs on different engines.
All a mag check does is prove the function of the mags at the time you do the check. It gives no guarantees against failure after the check. I once had a mag failure during takeoff in an Aero Commander. It worked fine during the run-ups but failed a couple of minutes later resulting in me aborting the takeoff.
I’ve always thought they looked like flying milk stools.
So are aviation threads now like cat threads? No pics or it didn’t happen?
So how’s the flying going? 
His plane still isn’t in the air, much to his dismay. There have been the inevitable setbacks - mech’s illness plus things were found that at first glance looked ok, but with closer inspection really weren’t. The biggest one of those was with a wing - AFTER the damn thing was put on, and painted, they found that someone in years past had drilled through one of the internal supports to the point that the strength was totally compromised. Ugh. “New” wing found and purchased, road trip from SC to OH to TN to get it and deliver it.
But he’s still flying rentals any chance he gets, and he got one of those simulator program doohickeys to play with when he can’t get in the air for real.
I’m trying hard not to add up the bills and just be happy that he’s so happy
Yeah, my pipe dream is to buy dad’s airplane and have it restored. Last time I saw it, it wasn’t airworthy, and the owner never answered my letters. Assuming he’s got it flying in the last dozen years, it might cost $30,000 or so. New paint would be over $10,000 I’m sure, plus upholstery, plus interior plastic, plus wingtips and stab tips. New plexiglass is probably in order. It would be nice to swap out the 150 hp engine for a zero-time 180 hp one… It would probably cost $80,000 or more, and I’d wind up with a $50,000 or maybe $60,000 airplane. As it happens, there’s a school in this state that has an already-restored C172K. It would make more sense to buy that one. (Of course if I had what I would consider a sufficient surplus spondlix to buy it, it wouldn’t matter.)
The G-IV crash we’ve been discussing? They left the frickin’ gust locks on.
Damn.
Did you mean to post in this thread? 
Yeah, sorry. But we’re all the same people here anyway.
Are the gust locks in a G-IV controlled from the cockpit? Are they like the yoke lock on a small plane?
A handle in the cockpit, on a side wall, not the yoke.
Your fear is irrational.
It’s like him asking you to quit riding because a horse you bought had thrown a shoe when a previous owner rode it in an irresponsible way.
Totally irrational.
You really need to consider therapy kinda irrational.