One of last week's letters has stayed in my mind the whole week, and I thought I might pontificate a little on what it had to say. It's about that perennial favourite, the credit card.

In case you missed it, this was the relevant section: "Would it make sense to write an article about the incredible practice of all credit card companies to charge OUTRAGEOUS interest rates on outstanding amounts? These charges are all the more outrageous … when the invoices demanding payment often arrive many days or weeks later than the 'pay-by' date."

Where to start? At the beginning, I suppose. Do you need a credit card? In this day and age, the answer is yes.

In certain countries, they'd lock you up for being a communist if you couldn't produce the ubiquitous plastic. Very few hotels in the world would welcome you through their doors without a card, for example. Cash is passé.

Online shopping would be impossible without a credit card. Most travel would be out of the question.

So you must have at least one credit card. The correct number, as I have said before, is two. Any more than that and you are wasting money and valuable wallet space that could be given over to photographs of naked people, or what have you.

But, you know, having something and using it wisely are two different kettles of how's your father.

For instance, you have a brain, but how often do you use that properly? Gotcha.

I must now dispose of a dark cloud hanging over my head in this regard.

Eagle-eyed readers will recall that a few weeks ago, I overspent my credit card and placed myself in danger of having to sleep in the New York subway.

What right do I have to advise you how to behave in this area, you're asking yourself.

The answer is that I am a reformed sinner, like an ex-smoker (not that I am an ex-smoker), keen to punish anyone who lacks the resolve to do as I do.

Walk a mile in my shoes, baby, and polish them up nice before you give them back.

You don't have to use the credit implicit in the card. Prepay. If you're going away for a week, estimate what you're likely to spend, and transfer that much or more into the card, so that you have a balance in your favour, and then spend your own money.

They can't do anything about it. No interest charges will be levied. Other than a minor annual fee, your card will be forever free. Better still, use a debit card, whatever that is.

Bah, you say. That would take financial discipline and planning, and you're too high and mighty to be bothered. OK. Fine. Pay the interest, which, as my correspondent points out, is absurdly high.

The cost of your weak character and bad attitude is exactly one and a half percent a month. Here we go. Turn up the volume. Rant alert.

Let me speak plainly for once in this column: if you want to buy something you can't afford, you shouldn't buy it. Duh. If you need someone else to pay for it, you're going to get caned.

I'd like a yacht, but I can't afford one. Every bank in the world would be delighted to lend me the money to buy one, however.

But once I put myself in their hands, making them buy me a boat with their money, who am I to say how much is a fair rate of interest?

If you don't have the money, don't buy it. End of story. Turn the page and start reading about whatever else is in this newspaper.

Here's how life works: no ticket, no laundry.

As to the local banks' practice of posting statements based on the assumption that the Bermuda Post Office will deliver them in less than four weeks, I agree that is poor behaviour.

But that's how it is, pal. Get used to it. Live in the real world for a change.

The Post Office is hopeless, so accommodate that fact into your thinking. To solve the problem, go online, register with your bank, and cut the snail mail out of the process.

To paraphrase the master, emancipate yourself from postal slavery, none but ourselves can free our mail.

It's time to rethink your existence.

Much of what you think of as necessities are luxuries. Do without them, or save up and pay for them with your own money.

If you join a club, you have to play by the rules. If you're not going to take charge of your affairs, others will, and it will end badly for you.

Stand up. Shake yourself by the shoulders.

Slap yourself around a bit, saying: "I have lived my life this far as a hopeless zombie. I have sleep-walked through the only life I will ever have. I have been a fool.

"My wicked inertia has led me to a bad place. I am not a victim. I will wake up now and start anew. I will show some discipline.

"I will take responsibility for my actions. From this day forward, I will take control of my life."

Then take yourself out for a nice pastry and pay with cash.

Welcome to a new existence, one in which you use a slightly larger portion of your extraordinarily powerful brain to your advantage.

One in which it doesn't matter that banks and everyone else act in their own interest. What do you expect them to do? Now, you do the same.

Fight fire with fire. You're a playa! You are reborn. It's going to be OK, starting here, starting now.

Got it? You have wasted your life, whining about man's inhumanity to you. That's how it's done.

Do you know nothing of history? It's over.

The old you is dead and gone. Let that person go. Start afresh today.

The era of change is upon you.

Notice how the sun shines a little more brightly. There's a new you, and that person is going to kick bottoms and take names. That person is a winner. Say yes and say it now.

Tear up all your credit cards except two. Vow to save money. Bathe more often. You can do this. Together, we can walk into a new world of solvency.

You can be rich, but first you have to learn discipline. Stop being a jellyfish.

You can succeed. You will succeed. Nothing can stop you now. Go for it. Quo fata ferunt, my eye.

Your new mantra is: quo what I what ferunt. Carpe the old diem, carpe something, and get on the case.

Phew. I'm exhausted. I'm going to lie down.