"B4RT" wrote in message
...
Craig,

The best way to save money is to NOT do any training until you've saved
enough to do all of the fight time in a concentrated block of time. Pass
your written exam first while youre saving up the money. Having the exam
out of the way will relieve you of a lot of pressure so you can focus on
the expensive flght time. If you only take one or two lessons a week it
will probably take you at least 30% more flight hours to complete.

Bart


This is, as far as I'm concerned, the best advise of all. I can't comment
on the rest because I don't have enough overall experience to but I've seen
too many folks through the years start the process, run out of money, save
up more, and then start again. The problem is, you loose proficiency while
saving up more money and have to redo part of what you'd learned before when
you do get back into it. Every time you do that it's adding unnecessary
cost to an already expensive process.

Also, having that darned written test under your belt "before" you start
flight training is priceless. You've got the book learning done and can
concentrate 100% on the fun stuff, the flight training. Much of the book
learning didn't fully click in for me anyway until I was putting it to
practice in the aircraft. Oh, I could answer the questions on the test just
fine but it wasn't until I was in the aircraft that it "really" made sense.
I can't imagine how it would have been trying to get the concepts down in my
head from the book and trying to put them into practice in the aircraft at
the same time. Maybe it wouldn't have been any big deal but I'm "very"
happy with how it worked out getting the written done before I started
flying.

Good luck & Fly Safe,
Steve R.