Go with your first instinct of saving to the database. That's what it's there for...
Good advice. One problem of passing variable from page to page is that you have to reverify them, if that is important to you, but you still have to process them on every page. If you setup a storage method, then you can also use it to pass information that users shouldn't be allowed to set. Overall, it should be easier to manage the page flow if you only have to deal with the new information.