All my ships are purchased via isk earned through playing the game, I consider ships to be tools that will eventually break; and I never fly anything I can’t afford to replace at least 5 times over.
Well, in June only 4% of newbs lasted past 3 months.
It’s actually 2.5% at the 90 day mark, the 4% figure is for 30 days; both of which are still a better retention rate than many of Eve’s competitors, especially in the F2P/freemium segment of the market which is the one that Eve occupies. I did a long-assed post on exactly that a few days ago in another thread.