The true cost of flying school (Expenses Tracker)

Final update: 22nd February 2017

My Groundschool living expenses tracker is inclusive of the initial fees payable to BBVA and CTC for the purposes of finance admin fees and accomodation deposits respectively and is therefore artificially increased somewhat. Removing these from the equation sees my total Groundschool expenses spend come in around £3600ish. That's way more than I had originally planned but things come up here and there that are unexpected, such as necessary trips home etc.

You can see from the breakdown of costs in the graph above that transport was my number one expense. Having a car at Groundschool is expensive - especially if you're on a budget. Thankfully, I'd paid for my car insurance in advance of starting so didn't have that expense to worry about and when it came to driving to and from Groundschool I car shared so only used my car once every three weeks for that purpose. Whilst that did save some money, I still had to tax it at £20 per month and it's not until you make a note of all petrol expenditure you realise how expensive running one is! If you want to truly cut back when at Groundschool then maybe leave the car behind! I appreciate its sometimes not possible though. Whenever I made a trip home I basically throw away £40 in return fuel costs - that's another thing to consider too when thinking about planning a trip home.

In case you're interested, I've made a complete list of expenses below. I've been open with you and listed nearly everything I spent at Groundschool. It's a fair representation. The only thing I haven't listed here is Christmas shopping and sadly that did eat more in to my budget than I had originally planned so I had a tight few weeks in January that's for sure.

I plan to continue this type of logging throughout the remaining stages of training too.

Phone users please note this table is scrollable left-to-right.

Exchange Rate: 
To ensure a constant comparison, GBP values are converted using the exchange rate at the time of my arrival: £1 = $1.75 NZD. In reality, the rates changed on an almost daily basis due to Brexit and typical foreign currency market fluctuations.

Final update: 22nd November 2017

Following on from the popularity of the ground school expenses tracker by both prospective trainees and parents I thought i'd continue it into my time in New Zealand. The first thing that shocked me about the country was the sheer price of food. By contrast to the UK, the transport segment may look a lot less and when you delve into the detail this is because my group purchased a car for the cost of $1600 ($400 each) before then selling it on for the same price at the end of the training. Other cadets hired their cars for convenience at a cost of $350 to $550 a month split between them and as such if I was in this position I would have spent a lot more money. All in all the total of tracked expenditure was rounded to £3,200, or $5,600. That averages at about £400 per calendar month although it did fluctuate monthly. So go delve through the long list below and see what I spent my pennies on. I apologise in advance for my addiction to coffee, but it gave us an excuse for escaping Clearways.

Phone users please note this table is scrollable left-to-right.