Get your 4 up!
Boredbus
As an FO you are pretty much guaranteed 8,000€ Per month on average.
Re is the money enough. As a singly you will be laughing. You can live the life of Reilly and put £1000 a month in the bank at home if you come debt free. That will give you a very nice apartment, a very nice car and when your seniority lets you see daylight again a nice lifestyle.
Re Command 2-3 bank on 3 yrs likely you will interview around 2 - 2.5 yrs and promote within 6-8 months of interview. Thats currently where we are running at.
As a singly you will likely want an apartment so you will likely spend just under the allowance. The allowance is really misnamed it is basically pay but has been called an allowance for reasons previously explained. In essence it doesn't matter what you do with it, it is yours to pay the mortgage, spend on rent or keep. You get it in full every month or even in advance every 6 months should you choose.
Again on trips home. Leave must be taken in 7 day blocks. You get you leave allocation in Dec for the whole next year. As a junior FO ( seniority wise not the rank) you will not get the popular periods i.e Xmas, easter and school holidays but you will get all your leave and will get it more easily if you bid for off peak. I,e if you say you want 3 wks in october you will almost certainly get it. If you want two weeks covering xmas and new year then you are dreaming.
It gets better very very quickly i.e in 2-3 yrs you will choosing where and when you fly when you go on leave and what days off you have. The opposite of course being true when you join.
In answer you could have 3 two week trips home, 7 single week trips home or variations on the theme. As a singly it is very very easy, us married guys are more constrained to school holidays and getting home is very difficult sometimes.
If you have the hours for command in FR unless you have some burning desire to get out here. Command is command. Take the command get 500-1000 hrs LHS then think about where to go or what to do. I love our life here but many things are not within your control. So if something goes wrong here and you leave if you once had command you have more options.
Life in FR is horrible, FR is horrible but nothing is worth more than command time in this game, trust me give me a time machine and I would have made some very different choices back when I started my civilian flying!
Im not suggesting coming as a DEC as that is a policy that is to be discouraged but have the PIC 738 in the bag may be useful when you do need it down the line with a family to support and you find yourself unemployed. It will likely happen at some point in your career and it it doesn't forewarned is forearmed.
VT