Hello Matt,
I will give you a run down on what I have done so far as I was in the exact same position as you.
I had my first flight in feb 2004 and completed my PPL in Oct 2004 and since then I have done my hour building (not completed yet), flew to france solo from scotland and done 6 hrs IMC training. I done all this by working and using my monthly wages to fund this part. For the past 8 months I've been saving up my wages and I have plans to take an 8k career developement loan and go complete my training (ground school theory, CPL and IR)...one of the places that I'm favouring at the minute is Egnatia Aviation, their pricing meets my budgets aswell as other factors.
I could easily go and get an unsecured loan of around 20-25k to complete my training tomorrow but I dont fancy the repayment schedules when I would be struggling to compete in a very competative market for my first job!
My aim is to try and complete my training with the least amount of debt possible as I may need the banks for TR bonding etc...(not that I would like to but thats the way the market currently is unfortunately).