Was young Luke Skywalker a freeloader or a selfless hero? In a point/counterpoint argument, Mike Ryan lays out the argument that while Han Solo owned his ship, no matter how he acquired it, Luke took advantage of the Rebel Alliance in using an X-wing or two as his own personal conveyance.
In The Empire Strikes Back – after Luke destroys his snowspeeder and even gets poor Dak killed – instead of heading off with the rest of the Rebel Alliance to the designated meeting point after the evacuation of Hoth, without telling anyone Luke decides to take his Alliance issued X-Wing to Dagobah instead. And then he crashes it into a swamp. Now, look, I know what you’re thinking, Um, Luke is a hero, I bet he gets some leeway. So, try this out: the next time you land some big account at work, or really come through in the clutch that results in your company profiting in some kind of way, go take one of your work’s company cars without asking and drive it into a swamp and see what happens. There is no way your boss will say, “Well, Johnson over there did land the Dubois account, I guess we can let this whole thing about the company car and the swamp go.”
But there's another way to look at it. Commenter DarthBile laid out a counter-argument and refuted each point of Ryan's position.
Finally, we have to understand that there was a reward given to both Han and Luke for saving Princess Leia. We see Han loading up the Falcon with supplies and credits to go pay of Jabba the Hutt. My guess is that Luke was offered the same for saving Leia’s life. Maybe he declined the reward in lieu of personal use of an X-Wing? He could have easily entered into a contract with the Alliance for all sorts of privileges. The possibilities are, well, more than you can imagine!
He also goes into the inheritance Luke could have pursued, if he had chosen to, including Padme's family holdings on Naboo and Darth Vader's accumulated fortune, as well as his uncle's farm. What's an X-wing (or two) compared to all that? Read the rest of the musings on Luke's finances at Uproxx.