A certain amount of mail arrives arguing against my approach to saving. The thrust, generally, is that this column focuses too much on thinking about the future and lacks spontaneity as a result.

Cup Match is over, but the weekend lingers on. Using the example of the past couple of days, in accordance with those readers who disagree with the saving strategy, I offer a revised technique. It's what might be called the Cup Match Method for Having a Good Time.

First, the structural stuff. Rent a place, or take out a mortgage, that costs much more than you can afford. Lie to the landlord or the bank to obtain a place that greatly exceeds your ability to handle it. Try to set up a repayment schedule for much more than a quarter of your salary.

Buy a giant car. Put down the smallest deposit they'll accept and then make huge monthly payments. Drive the car to town in the morning rush hour and park it there all day. Drive it home in the rush hour. Spend evenings and weekends driving up and down the Island for no particular reason. Text while you're driving, so that you can crash into things. Buy a new car every year.

Marry and divorce as often as possible. This is a crucial part of the Cup Match Method. Divorce settlements drain your net worth faster than almost anything else. Make sure to give the woman with whom you cheat on your wife very expensive jewellery as often as time permits. In your spare time, sue anybody in sight as often as possible. If you receive small cheques from time to time, put them to one side and vow to deposit them eventually. Then forget about them forever.

Dine out every night. Only eat at five-star restaurants. Drink the most expensive wines. Buy food, stick it in the fridge until it rots, and then throw it away. Overeat; you'll have to keep buying new clothes. Buy clothes one size too small that you know, deep down, you'll never wear.

Spend as much as you can lay your hands on buying useless junk that you'll never need. Make trips to the States specifically to buy stuff, and stay in the finest hotels while you're there. Drink to excess. Get into fights and allow your medical insurance to lapse so that you can make payments for the rest of your life on your medical bills. If you have insurance, don't file a claim when you could. Have two or three cell phones and use them non-stop to talk to worthless ninnies.

Overdraw your credit card limit without permission. Ignore final demands on your bills. Don't pay your parking tickets, while making jokes about how cushy jail life is. Walk away from your credit cards when you've used up all the credit. Have dozens of children. Lend money to losers.

Gamble, gamble, gamble, whether it's the horses, football or just whether the next car coming down Front Street will have an odd or even number plate. Gambling lies at the heart of the Cup Match Method. Buy lottery tickets. Reply to e-mails from Nigerians who offer to make you rich.

Try not to read or learn or do anything that would improve the condition of your mind. If you ever find yourself thinking about things, pop in the earbuds and listen to one of your many iPods. If you have children, give in to all their demands. Buy them the best of everything, and lots of it. They'll appreciate it and grow up better for it, under the Cup Match Method.

To do all this, you'll need to have a job, but try not to do any more work than the bare minimum. Arrive late every day, take a long lunch, and start preparing to leave at 4.30 p.m. Take a lot of sick days. Whine all the time about how hateful your job is, and what a swine your boss is. Try to waste as much of your colleagues' time as possible.

To sum up the Cup Match Method: live for today; to hell with tomorrow.

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I was kidding, as I'm sure you know. The beauty of Cup Match is that it's a holiday, time out from our sensible, balanced lives. If you're already doing any of the above, now might be a good time to take a long, cool look at yourself and your way of life. Sustainability is the buzzword these days. Is your lifestyle sustainable?

* * *

One other irate e-mail lies in the inbox. It arrived last week, soon after a little rant appeared in this column about BTC's voicemail lacking security.

"For some reason (hmmmm, I wonder why?), M3 Wireless has ratcheted up customers' voice mailbox access security, so that while one previously needed only a four-digit PIN code to access one's voicemail from one's own phone, one now needs to first enter one's entire phone number, plus hop through several new menus. AND the new system is very buggy, with approximately 50 percent failure of any intended user action. Actually retrieving a voicemail occurs one time in six.

"This is not actually a security measure recommended in your column - in fact, it's the exact converse of what you suggested. You correctly suggested that PIN-less voice mail access from phones was weak security.

"I had voicemail access that did require a PIN, but did not require anything else from the phone whose VM was being accessed, and now requires considerably more menu-hopping. What used to take three button-pushes to access now requires over a dozen buttons to be pushed, with pauses between series of them - and it fails. What used to take me 15 seconds to accomplish (getting a voice mail) now takes up to five minutes.

"While I suspect your column stimulated M3 to take this bass-ackwards position, I do not hold you at any fault," the e-mail concluded. And so, like his phone, I'm off the hook.