People feel a sense of stigma or shame.
People do not like the sense of kind of finality and admission of financial failure.
I've seen studies where people have gone without food purchases, they've let their health suffer,
they've gone to extraordinary lengths to try to make sacrifices in order to keep paying the bills for as long
as they could before they filed for bankruptcy.
That was Dr Joseph Spooner, an associate professor in the LSE Law School,
highlighting the emotional toll debt can place on a person and the lengths some will go to before having to concede they can't pay what they owe.
Now if we were all, you know, economically rational robots, nobody would do that, right?
They would say there's a bankruptcy law that exists, the first sign of trouble, I'll just file for bankruptcy.
Why should I make these sacrifices?
But that tends to be not the way that people actually act.
From individuals to governments, borrowing is a fundamental part of our world.
But with a deepening cost of living crisis, for many, the burden of debt looks only set to increase.
Welcome to LSE IQ, the podcast where we ask social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question.
I'm Jess Winterstein from the IQ team, where we work with academics to bring you their latest research and ideas.
In this episode, I ask, do we always need to pay our debts?
I'll be asking Joe Spooner why so many of us are in debt and how government could better address the problem,
and speaking to Sarah Williams,
founder of advisory website Deccamal,
about how those concerned about their finances might be able to mitigate some of the most damaging aspects of being in debt.