On Money: You can’t take it with you anyways
This is Part Five in a collection of essays about my changing perspective towards money as a child of immigrants. Part One can be found here, Part Two here, Part Three here, and Part Four here.
The other day, I saw a someone wearing a shirt that said “First Year Being Rich,” and had a pretty good laugh. I needed that shirt, not just because of my commitment to wearing hilariously translated English around town, but also because that shirt resonated with me. Ah yes, my “On Money” essays entitled “The Virtue of frugality,” “Lifestyle Creep”, “The Abyss gazes also into you,” and “It’s just money,” now with the latest instalment, “First Year Being Rich.”
As far as being rich goes, I’m far from it, in China, certainly in Shanghai, and even more so compared to the west. Though cost of living in Shanghai is a lot lower than it is in Toronto, the ceiling for wealth feels a lot higher. Certain common expenditures still feel like irresponsible luxuries brimming with cognitive dissonance to me: concert tickets and nice dinner to name a couple. The other day, I was invited out to prix fixe drinks at 800RMB. I didn’t even know a set menu was a thing they had for drinks, much less that they could charge 160CAD for it. Of course, I declined. There is a parade of Porsches, Lamborghinis, and Ferraris rolling down my street on weekends. There are hotels whose cheapest options cost as much as three months of rent for me.
However, with a slight bump from what I was making in Toronto, and a markedly lower cost of living, I feel financially liberated. I’ve been here three months and haven’t budgeted once, in stark contrast to the meticulous bookkeeping I had been conducting in Canada. I’ve had a few scary moments as expenses piled up near the beginning of my sejour here: rent is paid in three month instalments, and the aforementioned irresponsible luxuries came scarily close to a few of the monthly paycheques. But aside from occasionally ensuring that I still have money in my bank account, I’ve spent quite liberally. I have been telling myself that expenses will normalize as I make the homeware purchases and gym registrations, but my monthly spending only seems to be going up month over month.
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A few weeks ago, I went to get some braised beef noodles around the corner from where I lived. The shopkeep asked me if I wanted pickled vegetables. I nodded without thinking, then realized that I had been upsold. Then he asked me if I wanted lamb skewers as well. I shrugged, and asked for one. He told me the minimum order was two. As I sat waiting for my pickled vegetables braised beef noodles with two lamb skewers, I realized that at no point had I asked for the price of the add-ons, most unlike me. I had become a “yes, I’ll have the guac” sort of person. The sort of person who orders at a restaurant without looking at the price. Sure, I’ll make sure there are a reasonable amount of dollar signs on the reviews before heading in, but once there, I pick what I like. I had become rich.
I virtually never took Ubers in Toronto, and now they’re a reasonable option if it’s raining — I still mostly take transit, bike, or walk, depending on the distance. I didn’t even have an Amazon account back home, and now I order so much from Taobao that it feels like Christmas every single day. I don’t know what this package is, and I get to unwrap it. If I see a lamp or a pair of pants I like, I immediately image search it on Taobao and buy it. I can have all the fresh fruit I want delivered to my door, without waiting for grapes to go on sale, or trekking to Chinatown for mangos. My last grocery order was 60RMB (14CAD) for a kilo of dragonfruit, 2 kilos of grapes spread across different varieties, two kilos of peaches, and a bottle of soju. And to my eternal shame, I have a housekeeper who comes once a week.
To claim saving feels incredibly hard in this context seems tone-deaf. And perhaps it is: I wince when I see the copy of “Marxism versus Liberalism” on my coffee table and am grateful my housekeeper doesn’t understand English. But given the purchasing power my salary has here versus back home, saving feels ridiculous. Any of the single items in my last grocery order back home would have costed as much as the entire order did in Shanghai. Let me enjoy my few years of not rationing fruits and shopping around for eggs. An aggravating factor is the difficulty saving in China: Chinese investments are murky, and moving money abroad is even murkier. My hard-earned dollars are depreciating if they’re not being spent. It’s like the caricature of young millennials who have given up on home ownership and are splurging on twenty-five dollar smoothies, except 25CAD buys a hotpot lunch for two, or a forty-five minute massage.
And there’s the feeling that I’m on borrowed time: though I never felt like I squandered my youth, I was definitely more frugal than most of my friends. I had some regrets as I entered my late twenties — by the time everyone was starting to stay in and tend to their own gardens more, I had already been doing it for some time. Had I missed any life experiences through my frugality? If I did, I thought it too late to relive them, but now that I’m in a new city, it seems like fate has given me another chance. Armed with the knowledge that these moments are not forever, perhaps I have subconsciously started to depreciate money while I appreciate time.
I justify it partially by telling myself that I’m not travelling as much as I used to, or at all: the first trip I have planned since arriving in China will be likely in October. But I know the longer I go on living like this, the harder it’ll eventually get to rein myself back in and accrue some savings. Perhaps I should put something away for retirement sometime soon, even though I’m not sure if I’ll go back to recording where every last cent disappeared to. I’ll figure it out eventually. I only have a few months left of my twenties after all.
