I entered the regional industry 3 years ago, and I'm now at my 3rd airline. I worked at one terrible, awful, crappy place and 2 overall decent airlines. At the first airline I was working for, I didn't commute, held a decent although tiring schedule, and we had a fair contract. I was home every day and was able to squeak out a few extra days off here and there, although 11 days off/mo was the norm. After a year and a half the airline decided to cut a fleet of airplanes, so I was furloughed and kicked out to the street.
Enter airline #2...the terrible, awful, crappy place. I commuted halfway across the country to my base, we had no contract, and the pay was awful. Being that we had no contract, we missed out on things like cancellation pay, daily scheduling benefits, and block-or-better (getting paid more for flights that take longer than scheduled). I was frequently scheduled to the very limits of the law (many 16 hour duty days and many days with 7.95 hours of scheduled flight time) and rarely had more than 9 days off each month (last May I ended up with a total of 5 days off for the month). I pretty much lived in a "crash pad" which consisted of a 2 bedroom apartment near NYC with 16 beds in it. I recall at one point 3 weeks passed without me ever making it home. After checking my logbook, I found that I flew every day for 14 days straight at one time. This kind of situation is usually prohibited when flying with a unionized airline that has a fair contract. So after about 6 months of being treated like this, I jumped ship once again.
At my current airline, I live in base while maintaining a good schedule that nets about half the month off (3-4 days per week). The pay is still low but the future is looking better than it ever has for me. I'm expecting to make around $25,000 for my first year here, and estimating around $34,000 during my second year.
Case-in-point, there are a wide array of experiences to be had when working for regional airlines. Do your research before jumping into the career. The pay at the regional level is not particularly good and it's probably not going to change. I personally couldn't imagine having that amount of debt hanging over my head while making 20-25K during the beginning years of my career. Your own choices about where to live and what company to work for have a major impact on your quality of life and how miserable or enjoyable the job is.