Originally Posted by TaylorPilot

I am basically where you are. I am 38 years old, got back into it in 2017 with just a PPL. Got through my CFI over the next 18 months and got my CFI in December of 2019. My best month flying was March 2020 with about 70 hours and for the next year with my schedule wide open, never got more than 25 hours. I planned on 18 months of just grinding it out. We had a 5 year old at the time (7 now), and my wife managed a high end Italian restaurant 4-5 nights a week (making more in 2 shifts that I do in a month), so we were barely scraping by. We had a Coronial last year, so now we have a 2 month old as well, and life is very stressful. Now it is over a year later and I am just at 700 hours with at least another year to go if everything worked out perfect (highly doubtful). I do have a side hustle online business that helps some, but at this point I don't even want to go out to the airport. It just seems like I am wasting my time and could be doing other things that are a better use of my time right now. I instruct at the closest flight school to me and it is a 50 minute drive. Most days I have one flight, so it is 2 hours of driving, $10 in gas (and going up), and all in about 4.5 hours of my time to log 1-1.2 hours. That rounds out to a total profit of about $3.34 an hour. I am going to stick it out as long as I can (until it starts to affect my marriage). Hopefully things start to pick up fast. My wife hasn't asked me to quit, because she knows this is something I have always wanted to do, but I don't know how much longer I can do this without it being selfish. Although, it isn't like there are a million other jobs out there right now either...

I read some of these guys posts and I don't understand their POV. This is a job. It is suppose to provide you with an income, not be the center of your life...I enjoy flying, but not at the expense of everything else...If that is what it is going to take to make this work, I would rather find something that I can do that would afford me the luxury of just flying for fun (harder that it seems)...But I gtg, I have a new student at 3pm....LOL