Given how much debt we racked up while at graduate school in Georgia, do we regret the decision? This is something I have asked myself many times, especially given the fact that I am no longer working in Bioinformatics on a day-to-day basis. But the truth of it is, we do not regret having gone to graduate school in Georgia for two main reasons. One, if I would not have pursued my ambitions in Bioinformatics, I would always have had that "what if" feeling, and wondered what was down that road. Second, while in Georgia, we came in contact with someone doing mobile app development, which dramatically changed the landscape over the next few years. Granted, we could (probably should) have saved up more money before going to graduate school. We had saved around 15-20k prior to graduate school. We all make left turns in life and learn from them.
Around April 2010 was when we started our side business. While at graduate school, I had a Russian friend named Ivan who, instead of studying for tests, etc., would sit in the lectures reading the iOS app development spec. He tried to get me involved, but with a new family at home, and going to graduate school, I didn't feel that I had the time. However, as soon as I graduated, I had a little more time and started getting into app development myself. The first app I developed was a little DNA alignment app. Soon after that, my wife got involved also, and we developed Word Waffle, LDS Temples, Finger Dance, and a few smaller apps.
Ultimately, this little app development business earned well over six figures over the years. One of the apps, Finger Dance, rose to be quite successful. At its peak, it earned $8,000 in a single day, the day that the Kindle fire was released from Amazon. On the Google Play Store, Finger Dance gained over 5 million downloads. This was the sliver lining in having racked up so much debt at graduate school. And besides that, both my wife and I always had an entrepreneurial spirit about us. We both minored in Business. Mobile app development also gave my wife something productive to work on while wrestling with the kids at home.