^^^ Your story is a good one Ben - and if all wannabe's were mature adults with the judgment and experience that 12 years as an engineer in the military / living in the sandpit gives you, I'm sure this forum would be a lot different.
However, I would venture to suggest that the majority of posters on this forum are not in that same category. A lot are barely out of school and have no real-life experience let alone a decent job to fall back on, they aren't coming into this like you did, as a well-planned career switch after 10 or 15 years in other forms of employment - they are just going through the post-high-school angst of what career to choose. And because they are under pressure to choose a career - any career - and flying is the one that appeals, they perhaps choose to put the rose tinted spectacles on when it comes to researching whether it is in fact a smart choice AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME.
Many others are people who've been toying with the idea for years and have become so obsessed with this peculiarly PPRUNE / British wannabe obsession with age and being too old, that they too are feeling pressure to make the wrong decision at the wrong time. (Guess what guys, it's still better to hit a buoyant job market as a 45 year old - than to qualify as a 25 year old and find there is no job market!)
When I post on this forum, I guess I do often choose to frame my words in rather melodramatic language, because I feel these people need to hear something that is in very stark contrast to all the happy hyperbole that is undoubtedly sloshing round in their heads from reading their large pile of brochures and their several meetings with flying-school "career advisers".
As you correctly pointed out, if you have the fallback job and have the money or a good part of it already saved, then fill your boots and I wish you every sucess. Young people who don't have the backup plan and don't really understand what it is that they're gambling with - in a lot of cases, mum and dad's house - I'm sorry but in times like the ones we are living in at the moment, the harsh fact is that 3/4 of them are going to get chewed up and spat out by the aviation-dream-selling machine and left with nothing to show for it. Including the house.
I have to hold up my hand and say here that I did my flight training in the early 90s at the tender age of 21 - and I, too, borrowed money from friends, family and banks alike. In my defense, flight training is a lot cheaper where I come from and the sums involved were never enough to get banks interested in securing against houses or anything like that. The mere concept of a 200 hour pilot flying a big jet is completely alien in New Zealand, so the flying school marketing people had pretty much zero scope for selling dreams on the scale we see today, I certainly went into it with my eyes wide open in terms of expecting to spend several years working in GA for a pittance before I got even a small turboprop to play with, and that's pretty much the way it worked out. In modern day Europe the stakes are much higher, the cost of entry (and the cost of failure) is MUCH higher, and the training hype from the schools reaches even greater levels of fever pitch because they are trying to keep their OWN jobs and businesses afloat in the face of adversity. It's a pretty dangerous combination in these times.
Finally - Ben will you please please tell me what job it is you have where you work 6 days per month??!! I waaannnnnt it