Taking out a loan of that size involves personal risk and ssacrifice. When was the last time you asked your spouse to take out a loan that big?
Apparently Cruz and his wife were pulling in more than a million dollars a year at that time, more than the loan. In fact, after the election, Cruz was worth 400 thousand more than he did before.
Feeding your voters tales of how you're selling your asserts and spending your savings, implying they were willing to sacrifice it all and were if he had lost, then failing to tell everyone you did no such thing and simply got a really big loan to cover it.