Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian J 
Wanna see a good example of how it can be done? Check out EastbayK's husband. (I don't think he posts.) Less than 2 years ago he was no where near being a professional pilot, today he flies for XJET.
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OK, so 11 days later I just realized there was a reference to me here...
Yes, 2 years ago he had about 10 hours TT and a burning lifelong desire. Basically I got tired of hearing him talk about "someday when I'm a pilot" without seeing him make any progress at it or even fly on the weekends. So I told him "S$%^ or get off the pot buddy, 'cause I'm tired of hearing about someday". He about ran the car off the road in shock. 4 months later we moved cross country for training.
For us it happened to be the right time and combination of things. He had topped out at his job. We couldn't get by in the area we were living in on the salary he was making. He was 34, still young enough to have a good career ahead but felt like he was getting too old to make the change. We had retirement and home equity money we could cash out to pay for training. And most of important, it was the right time in our lives to make a major change. He had always wanted to be a pilot, but the starter wife had balked at any job that required him to spend the night away from her (he also had to sacrifice career dream #2, the law enforcement officer for her). I'm more of an absence makes the heart grow fonder kind of gal.
We talked about staying in CA and doing the training on evenings and weekends, but with both of us working we would have never seen each other. We decide to take the ripping off the band-aid approach. The year he was in training/instructing was hard, but it was only a year. Dragging it out indefinetly would have driven me nuts and been harder on us, both financially and emotionally. So we just bit the bullet and went for it. Yeah, there were a lot of naysayers that we had to deal with, but we kept at it.
And as Ian said, now he's an FO for Xjet. Who has never posted on JC. CaptainBob is another career changer who made a sucessful transistion.
K