You're not the only one
You're not alone. I'm 36, married, 1 child, integrated with above 85% first time passes, passed all flight tests 1st time with a first series partial IR. I left a good career in IT for this and frankly if I didn't have IT to fall back on I wouldn't have managed to keep a roof over my wife and child.
I've a piece of advice for anyone contemplating leaving a good career mid-life to train as a pilot - don't. A simple glance in the back of Flight International will tell you why. Typically there will be one or two employers advertising for pilots - that's either Ryan Air paying £8000 in year 1 in return for your £80 000 investment (including type ratings) and perhaps Emirates or someone similar looking for guys with 4000 hrs heavy jet experience which you won't have. It is one of the best jobs in the world, which is why it has similar career prospects to other great careers like trying to make a living as an actor.
Now compare that with Computing or Computer weekly (my old field) - tons and tons of jobs paying £40-£100 000pa, tons of 3-6 month contracts paying £100 000 a year and more.
At the end of the day flying is fantastically enjoyable, it really is but being an unemployed pilot with a wife and child to support and big financial worries aint no fun at all. Earning a good salary in a dull office might not be great but its heaps better than being broke and losing everything. If the prospects were that good wouldn't HSBC and the alike all be delighted to carry on lending money at highly profitable interest rates to would be pilots - well they've pulled out now and you have to ask why that is. Note they still lend for law degrees etc which carry nothing like the same risk of unemployment.
Incidentally this is the so called 'boom time.' If you're about to shell out £60k for a course might I suggest you take a look at the job adverts in the back of the trade magazine Flight International for low hours pilots - there aren't any!! This makes getting one rather difficult.
Well, sorry to seem negative but its about time somebody injected some realism here. The number of low hours pilots far far outweighs the number of jobs - even now and rest assured if Bird flu takes off the airline industry will be in crisis. Three years ago I posted on this board from my air conditioned major plc. office and I didn't listen to people saying how hard it is to get a job, follow the dream and all that. Well, I really hope it happens for everyone that wants it but it will probably happen for only 30% of us. Right now I feel I'd have been better taking my £120 000 (£60k plus 2 years lost earnings) and blowing £50k on an Aston, £30k on a Cessna and the other £40k on a boat, holidays, hi-fi or just paying my mortgage off a little sooner.
Here's one other thing. The older guys like me seem to struggle to get jobs far more than the young chaps so if you're the wrong side of 32 think very very carefully indeed before embarking on this. You've got a lot to lose.
desk-pilot