Rising insurance costs

[sns3guppy]

Wow. You really haven't flown many other aircraft, have you?

If the original poster is interested in other airplanes, by all means, look around. The Seneca II and the later models of the Cessna 310 have some of the best single engine performance and service ceilings of any of the piston light twins.

Twin Commanders are comfortable, have excellent engine out handling characteristics, and are nice flyers.

Most light piston twins have poor single engine performance. The Skymaster is no different. It's a light twin. Various other light twins will easily exceed it's single engine performance, and it's multi engine performance.

It comes down to economics and preference, then. If the original poster is considering something else, why not? If something else is more economical for him or her, then absolutely why not?

[rhurt]

A turbocharged skymaster does more than 17,000' on one engine.

[JeffAxel]

The P-Skymaster single engine service ceiling is 18,300, and that beats almost any other piston twin I can think of, FWIW. The climb gradient of the P-Skymaster is better than most other light twins too, especially if the engine you loose is the front one. While the accident stats on Skymasters aren't very good in comparison to other light twins, if I were going to loose an engine in a piston twin, I would rather be in a T or P-Skymaster than any other piston twin. YMMV.