Disgraced expenses cheat Lord Hanningfield insisted he had "paid his debt" to society as he pledged to return to the upper house.
The former Tory, who was released early from jail in September, said he had gone through "hell" and been left "pretty much destitute" by a £100,000-plus legal bill.
However he said it was right he should be allowed to resume his seat in the Lords, so he could use his experiences for the "benefit of others".
The comments, in an interview for BBC Radio 5 Live's Victoria Derbyshire programme, came after the upper house rubber-stamped suspensions of nine months and 12 months respectively for Lord Hanningfield and fellow ex-Conservative Lord Taylor of Warwick.
Because the bans were backdated to the dates they were sentenced, Lord Hanningfield will be entitled to return to parliament at the end of May.
The peer - who was found to have wrongly claimed more than £30,000 for overnight stays in London when he was not in the capital - said he was "disappointed" by the suspension but pleased it was not longer.
He insisted he would be repaying the amount in full before resuming his seat, even though his finances were under extreme pressure.
"I have had to remortgage my house. I am 70," he said. "I am pretty much destitute. I have never had that much money... I am now going to have real, real problems for the rest of my life surviving."
Lord Hanningfield expressed regret that he had been focused on saving "millions and millions of pounds" for the public purse, and did not pay "enough attention" to expenses rules.
"I think I have really paid my debt to society if I was wrong," he insisted. "I think people need to understand that. It has been absolute hell for the past two and-a-half years, and I am sorry."