Allison Elliott, senior wealth planning strategist for Wells Fargo Private Bank, said she worked with a couple in their 50s who were set to do extensive estate planning at the peak of the oil boom. But as oil prices fell, and their lease income with it, they went from wanting to use both estate tax exemptions, which were worth over $10 million, to using one, to not returning her calls.

“By the end of 2015, their net worth was about a third,” she said. “Their cash flow was also cut back by two-thirds. But they’re still well above the estate tax limits.”

Now, she said, they are looking to put $3.5 million worth of leases into trust for their heirs. They got to that point by realizing that even if prices stayed low, they would have enough to live on.

“As the money kept rolling in, they started buying things, but they had a safety net first,” she said. “That was where we showed them that their safety net was going to work even if they didn’t get more cash flow.”

Dane E. Crunk, managing director of Syntal Capital Partners, said that the people in the production and oil service industries best poised to make it through this downturn were the ones with the lowest debt. And low debt is usually sensible advice for anyone. But that was more difficult to do in this boom, where production companies asked servicing firms to quickly add employees and equipment, he said.

“Even some of our more savvy service business owners were forced to take on more debt and grow more quickly than they would have done,” he said. “It’s a really sore subject right now, this idea of partnership.”

For oil and gas executives, the drop has been a mixed bag. Jonathan A. Blumenthal, managing director at United Capital in Dallas, said he had clients who retired after working 35 years at companies like Exxon Mobil and their retirement packages were good. He said that because interest rates were so low, the sizes of lump sum pension payouts were as high as they had ever been.