Hi,

I'm a flight student whose been lucky enough to get a majority of their flight training funded by a program called Vocational Rehabilitation. My flight school sends me an invoice which I forward to VR. Then they send back a voucher which authorizes payment to the school which lets me take my flight lessons. I've been very lucky to receive this but it comes with one downside. VR is a government agency which at times can be incredibly inconsistent. There's been numerous occasions where my counselor quits without notice so I have to be assigned a new one, funding is delayed by several months (4 months sometimes) or they're just unresponsive to the point where it feels like they're avoiding my calls or emails. These delays have cost me up to three years of time. I'm turning 27 this month and all I'd like is to be done with flight training. (I've recently filled the time by pursuing a bachelors which is paid for in full by employment at Starbucks).

Recently I've thought of a work-around where I take a loan from Sallie Mae to finish a phase of flight training while I wait for VR send me a voucher. Then once it's sent to the school, the school just forwards it to the loan provider. VR always tells me that they can't gaurantee they can pay back loans but my arguement towards that is if it's sent to the school and the school sends it to the loan provider, then what's the difference? Aside from that, it would be nice if they could give me a definite answer instead of "we can't gaurantee".

Anyway, the only thing that stresses me out about this is the interest I'll accrue waiting for the voucher and whether VR will honor the voucher in the end. I have fears I'm gonna get an email one day like "Due to xyz, we can no longer fund your flight training".

What do you guys think? Is it better if I wait for the voucher or take the loan, get on with my flight training, accrue interest and finish sooner?