Not knocking the buy the aircraft idea, but, you plan to fly 200 - 300 hours on it. If you rent for $87 an hour and fly 200 hours, that's a known cost of $17,400 or $26,100 for 300 hours. no rent, no maintenance, no hangar/tie down, no 100 hour, no oil change, pretty much nothing. you can get a decent 150 for $17,000 but you will have maintenance costs. something will need to be fixed. also, are you paying cash? financing? you'll need a down payment and insurance in case of a incident or something in order to cover the loan.