Originally Posted by
dannybuckley8
gbotley, thank you very much for your informative response and also your positivity as like you said there is much negativity on these threads! That's absolute madness about the additional start up costs, is it really appox £4000 or like you suggested more like £2500? How comes BBVA would not lend you the entire loan?? How was you possibly able to find the extra 23,000?? Also how are you considering paying for your type rating fees, will they lend you that money or is £70000 you maximum?? I will certainly read your blog on this matter as this is a considerable risk which will worry me every day! I'm so pleased you are enjoying your training and the placement/employment after training sounds very positive. Thank you for your response, Danny
@dannybuckley8,
Well BBVA's set fees are nothing more than this:
- Application Fee: £650+VAT
- BBVA Legal Fee: £950+VAT
But they are variable on a case by case basis. If they need to conduct additional checks on your property these fees will of course increase given the lawyers they use are based in London which is where the £3000-£4000 comes in as everything must have VAT included that could soon add up.On top of this I also paid around £450 + VAT for our own solicitors / financial advisors to go over everything. You can't simply skip the latter part out as the entire BBVA contract requires the signing to be conducted in front of a registered solicitor of which they must also sign and stamp as witness. This is not a quick loan for car finance you're applying for, it's a mortgage.
Being 23 and having not long completed by BSc degree in I.T. (my fall back plan) there was no way I could put up the security myself as I don't own a home - let alone one with enough equity. Thus, guarantors are required and in my case they are my parents with the property being that of my grandparents. Some may laugh at how stupid that sounds in that i've put everyone at risk with this, but we didn't just jump straight in.. we spent months evaluating everything.. we visited open days.. with spoke with current cadets and past cadets to see how they're managing repayments etc before even contemplating applying.
Once we had, we needed to submit financial information etc to BBVA on the earnings and outgoings of all guarantors. BBVA aims to establish if the guarantors can meet the repayments if you as the trainee can not. In my case, with my parents still having a mortgage and committments of their own, BBVA did not wish to put them in a situation they themselves wouldn't be able to afford. In fact, BBVA wouldn't be allowed to do this by law! As such, the repayments on £70,000 were the maximum in such an eventuality. I initially thought that was game over given the course cost of £93,800, but my brother and parents kindly offered to fill the gap left after my own savings had been considered. I'm very thankful for that to this day - especially as I never asked them to do that.
JulietSierra6 offers some good insight in to the end scenario. It ultimately boils down to how you will live at the end and BBVA know this all too well given the amount of trainees they've now helped. When doing your maths, don't just factor in the repayments. Take an average starting salary for a pilot of about £30,000-£40,000, if not less after tax, and factor in living costs for rent, car, insurances, mobile phone, etc etc as living in places such as London Gatwick won't be cheap either.
Finding the extra £20-£30,000 will be something I'll think about at the time. BBVA do offer type rating finance although there have been issues in the past with those whom already have BBVA loans so i'm not sure what'll happen there. We've explored finance options or the £30,000 prior to me starting which -- again -- involved remortgaging. However, there are many airlines which now part-contribute or completely fund type-ratings and that is becoming more common place over time with Thomas Cook being the latest to join that bandwagon so... one can hope.
Again, hope that helps you!
All in all, I'll quote a previous cadet whom helped me loads in my own endeavour to join CTC, "You need to be in it, to win it. It's the risk you have to take and sure I hate the repayments, but work hard, play hard and boy is it worth it."