Would all of the above like to add some credibility to the point of this thread and state your current employment status and earnings?
Certainly.
I spent around £45k all in (see post 23). Finished the IR in late 2007, aged 36, with a whopping 220hrs under my belt. Q400 job offer early 2008, no charges for the type rating, uniform, crew water etc, just a 3 year bond on the TR.
Today I’m still on the Dash, and average take home is around £2,100 per month. Not a fortune, but I consider myself extremely fortunate to have a job (and if I was obsessed with earnings I'd have stayed in my previous career).
Before we all pull them out and see how high we can pee, the fact that I had trained modular rather than integrated was largely irrelevant to my airline (in fact, on my TR course there was pretty much a 50/50 split between integrated and modular people). Rather more importantly:
(a) Every low-hours candidate had been recommended by his or her school, and therefore had a sound and verifiable training record.
(b) They were then recruiting at least 10 FOs per month, meaning jobs were (relatively) plentiful.
We’re not recruiting at the moment, which means your choice of school and training route is pretty academic. However, if anyone insists on training right now – and God knows how long some of the more experienced people have been saying “Don’t do it” – then by choosing modular, you will:
(a) Save a considerable amount of money compared to integrated.
(b) Have the opportunity to train part time and thus work to finance your training.
(c) Be able to slow down or even accelerate your training to match the job market.
(d) End up with exactly the same licence at the end of it all.