Who Am I?
Welcome and permit me to introduce myself: my name is Paul Broderick, author of The Bankruptcy Diaries and creator of this website which aims to encourage people to throw off the shackles of their debt slavery and take back power from the banks.
My Story
Like many young people in Britain today, I was raised on a diet of debt. Right from my early student days, when overdrafts, loans and credit cards were first foisted upon me, indebtedness was a constant feature of my young adulthood.
In the ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ culture of the easy credit era, debt becomes normalized and the twisted psychology of it can quickly turn a modest liability into a tight noose around the neck. Reality soon begins to bite – once the demands of the minimum payment become too great you are eventually forced to confront the size of your liability. You realise your life is screwed. You do your sums, calculating how many years it’d take to pay everything off…
Your future is a bleak one. Endless days and sleepless nights are consumed with turning the debt conundrum over in your mind, desperately searching for a solution, hitting dead-end after dead-end.
It was at the point when the walls were closing in that I had begun to want different things from life. I had started to find out who I was and wanted to live very differently, in a way that the obligations of debt would never permit.
I encountered a lot of personal stories whilst searching for the answer. Most just accepted their fate and chose to struggle on; some elected to pack their backs and elope, leaving their lives behind to start afresh in a foreign land. Unfortunately, a tragic few opted for a very final solution – choosing to leave a rucksack full of bills beside the train tracks. Because of debt.
This is my story, but it is not only mine for this is the reality for thousands of young Britons and Americans lured into the debt trap under the auspices of savage liberalism. Whatever you think about the morality of my tale and the wider debt issue – and it is certainly an engrossing debate – for those who find themselves in the debt trap it is their lives, the only life they will live, that is blighted by this disease we call debt.
Faced with a choice between spending my best years spent in servitude to the banks, or regaining my freedom in a matter of months, I opted for an extreme solution. The streamlined insolvency laws inBritainmeant that I would be free from bankruptcy in less than a year. With no assets, I soon realised I was an ideal candidate for Quick-Fix-Bankruptcy. I could wipe the slate clean and take my life back immediately.
As I stood in the line of soon to be bankrupt debtors at the courthouse, the thought of the banks having to write off my debts provided me with great comfort. There’s an awful lot more to this story, all of which I’ve documented elsewhere. Looking back on it now, having spent these last few years living what I consider to be a more authentic existence, I can hardly believe any of it happened at all.
Paul Broderick
I have lived through the debt nightmare and have emerged a free man. Now I am here to help others.
- Check out my Mass Default Manifesto for justifying default on personal debt.
- Read about how you can invoke odious debt principles to say no to the banks.
- Join the international community of Debt Fugitives on the run from the long arm of the collection agencies.
- Take a look around the Bankruptcy Heroes Hall of Fame to learn about the irreverent debtors who stuck two fingers up to the money lenders.
- View the Problem Page for some alternative advice on debt issues.
- Read people’s debt stories, or tell your own.