I am no enemy of credit. The merchant's bill of exchange has, for centuries, permitted honest commerce that could not otherwise have been carried on, and a young tradesman who borrows to furnish his shop borrows wisely. What I observe in your age is not that credit exists, but that it has been made frictionless, and in removing the friction it has removed the discipline that made it safe.

The borrower of my day who sought a loan had, of necessity, to sit across a desk and account for his prospects to a man who would judge them. That interview was an inconvenience, and it was also a protection, for it interrupted the borrower's enthusiasm at the moment enthusiasm is most dangerous. The borrower of your day clicks a button at the checkout and divides a trifle into four payments, and no one interrupts him at all. It is precisely the interruption of enthusiasm that distinguishes prudent credit from the slow disorder of debt.

The danger is not the single purchase, which is small, but the accumulation, which is silent. A pair of shoes at a few dollars a month is a friend. A dozen such plans, each forgotten, scattered across a dozen merchants, is a slow theft from the household's future, and the household will not feel the theft until the sum of the small leaks has done its work.

My counsel is the old one, and it costs nothing to try. Account for every expenditure for one month, not because you expect to find great extravagance, but because you will find the leaks. What is written down is governed; what is forgotten governs you. Remember that he who goes borrowing goes sorrowing, and that the second vice is lying, which follows close upon the first, running in debt.