Price: NT$340

"If you have credit card debt of NT$100,000, and you pay the minimum every month, how many years will it take you to pay it off? The answer: nine years."

If you often forget to make your payments on time, and rack up penalties and processing charges, then sorry-you may end up only owing more and more, and never come out from under the debt....

It is an age that worships the market, and the financial realm is no exception. It used to be that only businesses had the need or ability to deal with banks. But in recent years financial services and loans-whether in the form of auto loans, credit loans, home improvement loans, student loans, or even loans to finance a honeymoon or the payment of taxes-have become ubiquitous parts of people's lives from cradle to grave.

Blind veneration of the market has led to one crisis after another. The most recent example is the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in America, which has caused the near collapse of financial markets around the world. And following Hong Kong in 2002 and Korea in 2003, Taiwan in 2005 experienced an explosion of credit-card debt, with about 500,000 "card slaves" accumulating about NT$40 billion in debt. It created a new financial crisis for the government to cope with.