ROI - congratulations on doing the thing the sensible way around.
It is very common to find a young FO with an £85k loan arranged by CTC with HSBC. The rate of interest is around 7%. When you look at the total repayment of the loan principal + the interest you arrive at a figure of around £140k usually with a typical ten year repayment plan following a one year repayment break post training.
Now that's fair enough but still scary when you're being placed straight into a profitable airline who will pay at conventional salary levels (albeit fiddled about with as loan repayments to make it more tax efficient). I can think of several ex-CTC cadets who got into BA as soon as they had 500hrs and are now year three BA pilots. Given their low seniority (nobody much has been hired behind them) they are not being able to bid for much work and no lucrative trips. With the loan repayments they are left each month with £1,500 to live off. In London/South East. A bit of rent, council tax, running the car, food and they have NOTHING left at the end of the month for any 'lifestyle' whatsoever. In one or two cases its move back into the parental home time already due to the burden of the debt. 25, a BA pilot NOT on a cadet salary and you're forced to live with your mum and dad still..
These debts are soooo easy to get into (well, they were) but the total repayments are huge. It takes so long to get back to being worth net nothing that you'll be well bored by your career choice before the loan is cleared.
Now put this scenario into the present context and remove the full time normal salary level employment and the risks are just insane. Pile an extra £33k on for one of MOL's type £16k type ratings or get lucky and hired by Flybe on the Dash for £29k and the numbers just do not add up if you're using borrowed money.
Of course, for the sensible man who is spending his saving and has no debt and no debt interest life is a lot more comfortable.
I used to think £55k was mega bucks to spend on starting a career as a commercial pilot. I spent £16.5k in 1998! Now I see people spending well North of £100k all the time.
Its become normal but it really isn't. The debt society that we have allowed to be built does none of us any good and I think that fact is growing into a widely held opinion.
WWW