"john szpara" wrote in message
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My purchase budget is $160,000, cash, and it should include
everything. I'm talking purchase, taxes, annual/prepurchase and a
slush fund for fixing any discrepancies. I hope that will cover any
needed avionics upgrades, as well.

My operating budget is currently $30,000/yr.

Does that budget include fuel and oil?

Where do you plan to keep the airplane, and what does a hangar there cost?
Or tie-down, if you plan to go that route?

All that said, it seems to me that $30K/year is plenty for any airplane in
that class, including the TR182 you're talking about. I have a seaplane
that is otherwise similar (turbocharged, retractable landing gear) and my
annual costs aren't even close to that (maybe half? I try not to write the
final total down ), including a pretty steep insurance bill.

The biggest thing to watch out for is that the maintenance the first year,
and maybe the first three years, is going to be above average, as you work
the kinks out of the airplane. You can never really predict the costs, but
as a very rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, you can take the base cost
of an annual inspection (probably around $1000-2000, depending on the
mechanic and locale), double that to get the total cost of an annual
(including whatever repairs may be required), and figure you'll spend about
the same on incidental maintenance during the rest of the year.

That winds up being between $4000 to $8000 per year on maintenance, total.
As a rough guess, I'd say you're more likely to tend toward to the lower of
those two numbers, but it depends on a lot of unpredictable things, and of
course a more conservative estimate is better for planning purposes. Also,
the higher number is probably a more appropriate guess for the first year or
so of ownership.

Does it look like I can afford this plane?

Frankly, I think with your budget you could afford a T210 if you wanted to.
But certainly you should be able to obtain and keep a TR182, and a pretty
nice one at that.

BTW, I don't recall the official designation off the top of my head, but
I've always used the term "182RG" to describe a retractable gear Cessna 182,
and would normally call a turbocharged version a T182RG. I admit, it gets
confusing if you want to include the model letter as well, but just a
heads-up that you may not always see it called a "TR182".

Pete