Doug, from a somewhat newbie on reloading. OK you say you have access to a loader? Anytime you want, also as stated set up to load what YOU want?
I will tell you, not always easy to find time to load. What I do is on days I plan to shoot at home town club. If it rains I load. Min 500 rounds.
As far as saveing money. with the price of lead dropping it will help with the overall cost.
What I did, I searched avery yardsale and gun shop I could find. Did FFL search for my area. I ended up finding a complete loader set up
MEC 650 70.00 with 3 bars and 10 bushings works great and still my favorite loader, YES if you get the loading bug you will end up with several loaders
RCBS 505 scale 25.00
mec size master shell resizer 50.00
Was lucky enough to get 2lbs red dot 1000 primers 1000 win wads thrown in
ok so now im in it for 150.00 at the time a flate of estates where 35.00 sts about 47.00 or so.
My first bulk order was 5k primers 125.00 5k wads 75.00 8lbs clays 90.00 15 bags of 7.5 STAR brand shot at 21.50ea 323.00
So now im in it for 650.00 for my first big run of reloading.
ok so for 800.00 I got to reload 6000.00 shells at 1oz each. now if I where to just buy the ESTATES 24 flats would be 840.00 STS 1128.00 thats saves 328 bucks.
Then there is the time. I spent the better part of the day resizeing 5000 shells, not fun at all. but it was done!
I then took 10 reloading sessions to reload all 5k worth of inventory.
My load was 1oz shot, STS hull, STS209 primers , 18grains Clays , TGT12S wad
Now I did great with that batch, but I was still not confident in my reloads to shoot ATA events, Factory STS for that.
More recently compnants for 5k rounds cost me 825.00 but even on sale STS are 6.99 a box. thats 1400.00 for factory shells. I use my reloads for all my shooting, practice, fun, ATA. I ran my 1st 50 and 75 with MY reloads with home made shot! NOW for me thats where reloading comes into WHY I do it.
Also ir is good for different loads. I load some very soft loads for the wife. Very simular to the Winchester AA feather lights low noise low recoil. Those are never in stock ANY where.
Do not reload to save money BUT to make the best of a rainy day and have fun breaking good scores with YOUR reloads.
In the past 3 years I have bought many loaders from guys who wanted to reload to save money........many loaders I bought fixed up and sold to make money for componants. load up a few hundred a see what you think