I've found my GA flying to really be about trips that you _wouldn't have made otherwise_, but the biggest barrier is cost. I've done little adventure trips with

I've found my GA flying to really be about trips that you _wouldn't have made otherwise_, but the biggest barrier is cost. I've done little adventure trips with my wife that were super fun and without a PPL we wouldn't have done the equivalent. But when it comes to boring stuff it's just too expensive to justify flying so the trips don't happen (since I have to rent). My suspicion is that the middle of the Venn diagram between "can afford a $500K aircraft" and "doesn't fly GA because they're not going to stay proficient enough to be safe" is vanishingly small. The doctors who fly their Cirrus once a year think they're Maverick so they don't care about the safety features. The guys who fly every chance they get aren't the ones stall spinning on base to final.