How Do You Find the Resources for Flying

Airborne_Again wrote:

It did for me when my youngest child was 16.

I’ll be 70 by then. Either things get back to normal in 2018 or that will have been it for me.

achimha wrote:

The time argument I don’t buy — everybody has time for flying if he/she really wants, it’s a matter of setting priorities and organizing your life.

All I can say is that this is not true for me and has not been for many years. As an employee in shift work time becomes a commodity particularly if you also are trying to rise a family at the same time. Frankly, I can’t remember when I last had more than maybe 2 hours time to my own, not in the last few years anyway. The few flights I have done had to be planned months ahead of time.

I am very lucky that I can work flexible hours/location on my current work role to fit in flying part-time. As an FI/FE I do a lot of flying and don’t pay for it per se (although ratings and renewals are v.expensive!) but it is geographically very limited so that type of flying is not for everyone. I don’t mind that as I get to meet lots of interesting people, fly lots of different types and the training / testing is very rewarding. My family are amazing and very supportive, but it is of course a balance – I forego spending time off doing sports/socialising/after work drinks etc.. as I choose to spend time flying and with the family.

Medres07 wrote:

Also I see a lot of 50/60y old people dealing with diseases

As a doctor you will know that more often than not these things are self inflicted through lifestyle…usual things…smoking…over eating….eating rubbish….no excercise…what do they expect?
Medres07 wrote:

I am sometimes scared I wont be fit to fly anymore at that age

Its generally agreed that fitness at any age is a lifestyle choice and needs a lifetimes commitment.

I could not agree more, quatrelle.

However there is also a common disconnect within the medical profession between trying to fix people using the standard accepted methods, and telling them that actually their problem is due to lifestyle and if they dropped from 120kg to 80kg they would not have the problem anymore. But as one doctor pilot wrote on here a while ago… that is not a great idea.

I only partially agree.. Lot of diseases are just bad luck. Consider yourself lucky to be healthy, and indeed do everything you can to keep it that way. Anyway, my point is I don’t want to postpone (flying) dreams, even if it means spending money now as a young person.. because you never know what the future may bring.

When I started to achieve the PPL I started to put money into an extra basket to asure beeing able to continue with flying after getting the licence. As I made the licence mostly motivated to fly to different holiday destinations around Europe beside the beaten track this was necessary and worked out well. It is like non flying guys save their money for holidays.
To get enough time for flying I asked my wife to make the licence too, so that we could share the hobby. This was an excellent idea, as the past 16 years have proofed.
Then business also helps. As I could use the plane like a others use a car to do my business trips, since I made the IR licence, the costs to finanace the annuals, repairs and technical improvements of the plane are shared between the private and the business pocket.

Dimme wrote:

I don’t gamble a.k.a invest money. Some wise person once said you should never invest more than you’re willing to lose, and many Greeks will agree with that statement. I’m not willing to lose anything, not even a cent.

You seem to say that you have found a completely safe store of value. What is it?

In other words, you have accumulated some assets that come out of your activities (maybe wages paid by your employer). How do you store the value of these accumulated assets? “Normal” inflation is by far not the only “cost”/risk:

• bank account → risk of the bank going bust (ask customers of Iceland banks, Cyprus, …), risk of currency (EUR in your case?) becoming worthless (ask “any” Argentinian, cf German Weimer Republic, …) far beyond “normal” inflation
• cash under your mattress → risk of theft, risk of not being able to use cash for any four-digit amounts because of anti-money laundering rules, risk of currency becoming worthless

Investments are not only about making profits (whether in nominal value or absolute value), but also spreading your exposition to risks.

• If you have some real estate, and the currency becomes worthless, you still have value in your real estate. You bought the apartment for 20.000 marks (the cost of 10t of meat), the tenant pays you annually 1.000 marks (the cost of 500kg of meat). Currency becomes worthless. 20.000 marks is now the cost of 1g of meat. After an adjustment period (new tenant, annual/5year reevaluation of rent in contract, …), the tenant still pays you approximately the cost of 500kg of meat annually. Maybe it will be 300kg, maybe 700kg, but in that ballpark. Even if that is now 10.000.000.000 marks.
• If you have some real estate and your bank goes bust, your tenants still owe you the rent. Their bank going bust is not your problem.
• If you have shares in a company you bought for 20.000 marks (10t of meat again), assuming the company survives the economic crisis – catastrophic inflation, it will have about the same assets, about the same customers, and about the same turn-over adjusted for inflation. Maybe divided by half, maybe divided by ten. But even divided by ten, it still beats by far your original nominal 20.000 marks now not being worth even a paper clip, since you will have the value of 1t of meat (in my example, 100.000.000.000 marks).

The only problem with this scenario is hyper-inflation together with rent control; exactly what happened in Germany in the 1930s. Landlords were wiped out just like pensioners and civil servants. Only exporting industries prospered.

lionel wrote:

the tenant still pays you approximately the cost of 500kg of meat annually. Maybe it will be 300kg, maybe 700kg, but in that ballpark. Even if that is now 10.000.000.000 marks.

No, the tenant votes for the socialist party and Hugo Chavez gets elected who sets the unified rent at 1 mark. No meat for you. You business people always forget that politics dominate the economy, not the other way around

denopa wrote:

The only problem with this scenario is hyper-inflation together with rent control; exactly what happened in Germany in the 1930s. (…) Only exporting industries prospered.

Well, I expect theoretically they were wiped out “short/middle term”, but not in the very long term. I mean, they got lousy rent out of their property, but one day the tenant moves, dies, … and they can rent at the new market rates. It might take several decades (like the French “bail 1948”), though, which indeed makes it a very long time, and is essentially equivalent to being wiped out. That’s theoretically. In reality, the war came and wiped them out another way.

Anyway, that’s why a diversified portfolio also has shares of companies (equity) as hedge against hyper-inflation :)