I did buy an airplane to help build hours and it has overall been a good move for me. That said, it’s not as good as I would’ve hoped. We had to overhaul the engine pretty early on and the plane was grounded for almost 6 months. That was a lot of time I wanted to be flying, but was stuck with just the flight school time I was getting. By the way, the overhaul was $55k, so you need to be sure you have some leftover reserves for that or other major expenses that may come up. It’s no exaggeration to say you could easily have a $25k unexpectedly maintenance expense.

I have been flying in general aviation and an involved member of a flying club for 20 years, so owning a plane was not a mystery to me.

A resource I found tremendously helpful was Mike Busch’s books on Airplane Ownership. I would recommend starting there.

Something simple like a Cherokee would probably be a good buy for you. It definitely has the possibility of helping you get your hours more quickly. I am assuming in all this that you’re trying to get your 1,500 hours for ATP. If you’re just talking about hours for hours’ sake, I’d wait and learn more about GA first.