My wife was in the CS, so that helped us persevere. You cant imagine how difficult it was for us during that period.

At our lowest point, we were going to offload all our share holdings at great losses just to reduce the loans, but we didnt because the amount that we could get out of them was too low, and the losses were too painful to swallow.

During that time, a lot of people (especially relatives) were saying hurtful things like we got what we deserved for owning 2 properties.

Few important lessons we learnt :

1. That being frugal doesnt kill you.
2. Economy go in cycles. When at the lowest point, the only way is up. And new peaks most are higher than previous peaks.
3. Need to have thick skin. Then we felt people were either looking down on us or sympathetically at us.