Bankruptcy
What to do when you've gone broke?
Stop the bleeding, list what you owe, protect your household basics and negotiate calmly. Going broke is a fact, not a verdict on who you are.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
Going broke hurts in places no spreadsheet shows. The shame comes, the sleepless nights, the feeling that everyone knows. Breathe: what happened is a fact of your life, not the definition of who you are.
What to do now
- Stop the bleeding before anything else. Don't take out a new loan to cover the old one, don't dip into your overdraft or revolving credit card balance to "hold on one more month." Expensive debt on top of expensive debt is the shortest road to falling deeper.
- Write it all down on paper. For each debt: to whom, how much, the interest rate, whether there is collateral (house, car) and how long it has been overdue. To find out what you owe banks, check Registrato, the Central Bank's free service that shows the credit operations under your CPF (Brazil's individual taxpayer number).
- Set aside the essentials. Housing, food, water, electricity, medicine and transportation to work come before everything. Brazilian law recognizes this: the Over-Indebtedness Law (Law 14,181/2021) speaks of preserving the debtor's "existential minimum."
- Negotiate calmly, and in writing. Creditors prefer to receive something over nothing. Use official channels: the creditor's own website and app, Serasa Limpa Nome, consumidor.gov.br, and the federal renegotiation program whenever one is open. For businesses, the Novo Desenrola of Provisional Measure 1,355 lapsed on 08/09/2026; today the path is to negotiate directly with the creditor, look at Pronampe under its regular rules and ask Sebrae for guidance. For individuals, there is the Desenrola Brasil 3.0 (Provisional Measure 1,393, of 25/09/2026): check the conditions at gov.br and see whether your debt qualifies. Don't accept an installment you already know you won't be able to pay.
- If the company is yours, call an accountant and a lawyer before closing the doors. Judicial and out-of-court reorganization exist (Law 11,101/2005), and there are specific rules for micro and small businesses. If you can't afford a lawyer, go to the Public Defender's Office or a law school's legal aid clinic.
- Don't hide or transfer assets. Putting the house or car in a relative's name once the debts already exist can be voided as fraud against creditors (Civil Code, art. 158) or fraud on execution, and it turns a money problem into a legal one. The home where the family lives already has its own protection against seizure, with exceptions (Law 8,009/1990). Ask the public defender what is protected before touching any asset.
- Take care of your mind. If the pain has turned into despair, call CVV at 188 (free, 24 hours a day), or go to your city's primary health unit (UBS) or psychosocial care center (CAPS). Asking for help is part of the plan, not a detour from it.
Be wary of anyone who promises to "clear your name" for an upfront payment, or easy money to get out of the hole. People who go broke become targets.
When it happened to Bairo
Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez says he went broke more than once. The hardest fall came after he built up capital with events and digital printing and joined a company as an investing partner. The business was not what it seemed and did not hold.
He says many people were depending on him at that moment. He describes himself, in that phase, as broke, broken and beaten, but still holding a flame of hope and faith.
What he did next was not the obvious path. Instead of spending his energy looking for someone to blame, he decided to learn what he didn't know how to do. The next attempt also went wrong. He kept going.
The path
Going broke doesn't erase what you learned by building. Bairo sums up the lesson in a sentence that became the rule of his life: every no is the ground of a yes. Today, your "no" may be the empty account. It doesn't have to be the end of the sentence. Start with the sheet of debts, the food on the table and an honest conversation. The rest gets built on top of that, one brick at a time.