loan?

[jawright]

I apologize in advance for the long post.

For a long time, I have been very "anti-loan" because I know that flight instructor/ FO pay is crap and I don't want to have to sweat a flight training loan every month when I get to that point. So, for the past 2 years, I've been working as a teacher, keeping my expenses as low as possible ($700/ month total in bills) and spent ALL of my remaining money on flight training. I've been able to earn my PVT and INST using the "pay as you go" method and am starting my COMM SE in about a month or so when I get enough $ saved up.
The pay as you go thing has worked out okay to this point. I love the FBO I am training at and my instructor is awesome...but now I am getting kinda frustrated because:

1) I feel like my progress has been very SLOW because I am always having to wait until I have enough money saved up to fly. While I haven't amassed any debt from flying with this method, I spend months just waiting to have enough saved up for training.

2) Even though I spend those months of saving money pretty much studying my a$$ off and reviewing knowledge/ preparing for the next rating, I still feel like I lose something because I can fly either very little or not at all.

3) I'm 28. I need to get this crap moving along and at least start instructing soon.

So I am considering either doing my COMM SE paying as I go and then taking out a loan to finish the ME add on and my CFI/CFII/MEI or just taking out a loan now and finishing the whole thing. With a teaching job, I figure if the loan is like $20K I can start paying on it immediately, make big payments, and have it paid off within a year or two.

Any advice? Loans scare me.

[jtrain609]

Hype the loan, and get on AIM.

[Flying Ninja]

Loans should scare you. I got about $100K at 8.5% variable rate and by the time I pay it all back according to the 15 year term, I'd have paid back over $175K. So enough said about the loan and being in debt business. So let's get to your points:

1. It's called opportunity cost. I think. While you're going slow and feeling frustrated, you're saving yourself the grief that I face everyday thinking about this huge debt I have. I rather be in your shoes. And I know you don't want to be in mine.

2. You're not getting the correlation and/or applicability of your knowledge to real world flying. That's a natural feeling given the direction of training you're doing. However, keep at the ground material and study, study, and study! There's way too much stuff to learn so you shouldn't have any wasted time to feel like you're missing something. Ideally, you should learn the ground material and apply it in the airplane in tandum. But either way, you'd be better off learning the materials first and know what's going on in the airplane than vice versa.

3. I understand that feeling. So moving on to your next point which will answer this one as well.

4. Skip the private multi-engine. Get your commercial single engine and then get your CFI. Build your time and earn some money towards that private multi and commercial multi.

Don't guess at financials. Account for every penny and what if scenarios. You don't want to get caught with your pants down on this. Trust me. It's not fun.