Thinking about a loan vs saving up for my PPL

I make roughly 28k a year and about 1/3-1/2 of that goes to bills depending on the month. Not sure if I should take out a loan for 12k for flight school, pay as I go, or save until I have it. If I took out the loan it would help me build credit and help keep up my proficiency throughout training, I could also get my grandma who has great credit to co-sign so the integrate doesn’t kill me. I’ve also heard that since the mandatory retirement age for a pilot is 65 waiting will in the long term take away how many years of high seniority pay you’ll be able to receive (I know I need a Cpl for all of that but this is the first step). If I pay as I have the money I’d have more time to study in between lessons but i might not be as quick with the flying portion which could end up costing even more money. If I save as up and wait I could do it all at once so it would have most of the benefits of the loan but I would probably be saving for a year just for this and then the Cpl is 5-10x as expensive. Thanks for any advice