Hello JumboBeef.
In answer to your questions. I love my job and intend to stay in instruction until I either retire, come to my senses, or win the lottery (it is after all just a job). However the pay can be pretty bad. See the "Search for the UK's best/ most poorly paid PPL instructor". The question you must ask yourself is this, can you live on approximately £10000-12000/ year? Some schools pay more, others less. If you do really well then you may reach the dizzy heights of +£18000/ year. There are jobs out there, but there's a good chance that you will need to move to find a suitable position. If you've currently got a "proper job", which is paying "proper wages" then I would advise you to give instruction a wide berth. Having said that you only live once and so it's really entirely down to you.
As far as costs are concerned I haven't got a clue. Somebody else will be able to correct me but I'm guessing that you won't get much (if any) change out of £30000.
Good luck with your PPL.
PS. Seeing as you appear to be a bit new to all of this please bear in mind that the hourly rates that you see in other threads relate to flight times. To give you a rough idea of how many hours you could expect to fly I can tell you that over the year I average 3.3 hours/ day. In the winter it's not at all unusual to have days where you will not fly at all. The only money that you will make on such days will be a retainer (£0-30/ day) and/or charges made for ground school.
Last edited by Esperanza; 27th Jun 2006 at 18:23.