My Situation:
In 2007 I had a real estate investment go bad. What happened was, I bought two houses for $40,000 total and gave a thieving contractor (Jeremy Evens of Indiana) $25,000. He never finished the work, so I've got two unfinished houses and $65,000 in debt. This was all done with money from my Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC).
I've been recovering from the blow by transferring the balance back and forth from my HELOC to 0% credit cards for 12 months at a time. The rental income from my successful real estate investments have been paying down the debt.