Don't pay up front!
When you say that you are going to 'sign up' for your PPL, I hope that you aren't going to part with large sums of money by paying for an entire PPL course!
You will find numerous stories on this forum from people who paid large amounts of cash 'up front', only to find that the school went bust shortly after. If you must buy blocks of training, use a credit card because that protects your money if the training establishment fails - it takes a while to get it back, but at least you don't lose everything.
Good luck with your training, I'm sure that you will enjoy it . . . oh, and 'not crashing' is a very good skill to develop!