I take for granted how simple that math should be, but sometimes isn’t, for new reloaders. I’m stuck doing financial projections quite often, net present value, return on investment, capital risk, net revenue, etc, so that’s second nature.

The reality, of course, is the volume of your reloading is critical, and saving any money against the equipment with a low cost round like 45acp is really difficult. It just doesn’t pay back to reload a few boxes per year of hunting ammo or plinking pistol ammo. Then there’s a spiral where the more you reload, the more your capital outlay grows, because you need to spend more on the gear to get going, otherwise you’re wasting time pumping on a cheap single stage and trimming by hand to make thousands of rounds... I’ve taught the NRA mettalic reloading course, as well as my own flavor of a reloading class off and on for about 10yrs, my economic assessment works out to suggest a new reloader should plan $1000-1500 on their gear, getting into a high volume capable system. Otherwise, the payback against time just isn’t there. Kinda like buying a bicycle instead of a car... you might not drive much, but when you do drive, there’s a big, big difference in the two, and you can’t keep up on the bike if you ever have to drive fast and far.