Private Pilot Flight School: Financials

Are you ready for some hard truth?
Flight school is crazy expensive.
Like private university expensive.

In my last post I talked about how holding a job is a really bad idea for pilots first starting out but it's also very expensive. Your best bet is to scrimp, save, live on ramen, take on roommates, donate plasma, do whatever you need to do in order to avoid holding a job that will interfere with training. To cut down on costs DH started his training at a community college. Even though the program was through the University, it was significantly cheaper and more comparable to community college pricing. However, for every hour you fly a plane, you're renting it. And that adds up fast. The farther along you get in your training the type of plane you have to rent changes and becomes more expensive.

We were extremely lucky in that DH's parents agreed to pay for 2 years of his 4 year degree. They let us choose which two years so we chose the last two years since we knew they would be more expensive, and then instead of holding a job he worked his butt off and completed his degree in 3 years, so we only ended up paying for that first year when we were at a community college. We managed to graduate debt free and while I don't know the exact percentage I can tell you we were in the extreme minority on that one. Most of our pilot friends that had little to no assistance graduated college with roughly 100-110k of debt. They currently make mortgage sized monthly payments towards their student loans.

We were also extremely lucky that we had each other. We weren't married until we both finished college but we were already depending on each other financially. After I completed my first year at the community college I took my degree completely online which allowed me to hold an almost full time job. It was a typical college student job and it didn't pay much. The best way I can describe how we managed to graduate debt free is we got really good at being poor. I coupon clipped, got creative with my cooking and leftovers never went to waste. Trips to a sit-down restaurant were far and few-between, only allowed for the most special of occasions and only if there was a coupon or deal.

Knowing that our lifestyle was only temporary helped us embrace it. Every month I would try to out do myself in how much I could save or how little I could spend. You have to make it fun, make it a competition, make it a game. Dream big about where you will be when you get there and know that the flight school portion is just a stepping stone to get there.