kanianic,
With every downturn there is an upturn and aviation is no different, but like someone mentioned earlier, you are better off building your multi-engine time and letting the airline that hires you pay for the turbine time.
I've been through a few downturns and upturns and it is amazing how quickly there can be an abundance of pilots resulting in furloughs and seatlocks, then BAM!, there is a shortage of pilots and everybody is getting hired again. One bright spot is that even though the retirement age was raised to 65, there are going to be a lot of retirements coming up in the next couple years and as the economy improves more jobs will come available.
Your primary goal right now is to have:
- better than the minimum number of hours required for an interview(including and especially multi-engine time)
- Good Work Experience
- Bachelor's Degree (pick something useful and that you enjoy)
- Stay Healthy
- No FAA or Moving Violations
These are the keys to getting hired at a regional if that is your ultimate goal.
And like someone else mentioned, paying for turbine time is generally a waste of money and makes someone else richer and you poorer. A lot of people forget that if you pay $10,000 (as an example) for training and you take a loan out on that $10,000 at say 7% over 5 years (again an example), you are really paying $11,880 for that training (source: http://www.bankrate.com).
Save your money, invest in yourself, keep your resume up-to-day, fly when you can and before you know it you will be attending ground school and soon after that you will be flying a jet.
Jeff