Chapter 28

I never got an allowance as a kid. I think my allowance was just that I was allowed to live there. All the spending money in high school I had came from my lifeguarding after classes and I never asked mom for any money. Just to drive the point home, Asians love money and the first thing I spent it on was independence from mom. Why did I do this? I mentioned previously that mom kept a tab on all the finances she spent on me and my tutoring so that was definitely part of it but another part was that we were seemingly obsessed with money even when she wasn’t using it against me to force me to study harder or what not. 

I recall various times when we would look for cheaper options at the cost of our quality of life in order to just save a few dollars. For example, our condo, while big and now almost completely paid off, had no air conditioning. On summer days, I would go to the library to simply get out of the heat. I couldn’t study at home because it was simply unsurvivable. My mom said that we weren’t going to get any AC because it was a huge cost on the machine as well as the electricity it used. I went with it at first but one time, when my uncle visited. He stepped once into the condo and decided to go out and buy an AC unit right away. He said it’s worth it and the cost was not significant. While I had no say in the matter, I knew that my uncle did have some sway over mom. 

So we got the AC and somewhere down the line I found out just how much money mom was trying to save a month on AC. The electric bill difference between having and not having AC? Around $20. Now, in 2009 that may have been a bit more valuable but the thing was, I was earning around $15/hour at my lifeguarding job. I would’ve easily paid $20 a month to keep the AC unit running in our living room. But mom was hell bent on saving $20 because it was an expense she could salvage by reducing her quality of life. 

This was the key point. 

Mom didn’t care about quality of life. That was on the lowest end of her value system. She saw $20 a month as a useless expense for air conditioning when she was perfectly okay with spending $50/hour on my cello lessons with CC and $40/hour for my tutors for the sciences. We also ate as cheap as we could. Mom bought Asian food mart premade dumplings for the majority of my lunches because they were around $10 for a whole pack and could last me 3-4 lunches. They were also very quick to make so she didn’t have to spend too much time on them. For regular food for breakfast and dinner, it was always the cheapest thing at the supermarket. She never experimented with foods or recipes. It was always just the cheapest food available. 

On occasion, she would also forget to make food. I would then have to dig through whatever was in the fridge and have my fill of it. Luckily, we usually had bread. I lost count of how many times I woke up hungry at night time and had to go to the fridge to pull out a slice of bread and eat it as is. No jam or anything. Just the bread. It was always bland. My mom spared no expense on pretty much any flavoring or spices. She only cared about the calories per dollar. Like I said, quality of life was the lowest on her value system. 

While my mom wasn’t a super super saver, it seemed she was very picky about what to spend money on. This would almost be a wholesome story, since mom chose to still spend money on my tutoring classes despite saving money everywhere else, if not for the fact that mom kept her tab on my spending for all the tutors and cello lessons I did. That simple act made it feel like she was evaluating how much money I was worth investing in and how much returns I was providing. If I had to guess it, I would say my mom’s value of my education and it’s worth would be just a bit higher than the quality of life improvements, which is a bit telling.

In the beginning when my mom was keeping tabs on me, I thought nothing much of it. Like I noted previously, just some more things for mom to throw at me when she was trying to lecture me on something. During this time, I tried very hard to maintain the narrative that she did care for me and my education based on the money she spent. I tried to picture the money she spent on me as a means for her to say that I was a good investment. But this illusion would be shattered. If not from just the sheer volume of yelling I got which always involved how much money she spent on me, then from a particular event with a friend of moms. This event was when and how the illusion was shattered. Here’s how that happened.

Mom tried to guilt trip me about the money I was wasting on the tutorial classes when she let loose a piece of information regarding how little money she had. This was strange as during high school, money had become less of an issue. I asked and found out that we were short on money because mom had lent money to a friend of hers. What’s worse is that she never complained once and only told me when I asked her about it directly. She neglected to tell me about this despite keeping heavy tabs on my tutoring lessons fees and cello lessons fees.

Let’s call mom’s friend “M”. 

M lived with her mom near our condo area. Her mom became good friends with my grandma through some kind of Asian seniors get together event. They were around the same age and M was around the same age as my mom so I think that’s how they got along so well. Ever since that happened, M would hang out with my mom. M and her mom were of Korean descent but had moved to China for work at some point and spoke fluent Korean as well as Chinese. M never bothered me much though I never really liked her. I had no idea why she was always staying over and taking up space on our couch. Doesn’t she have her own place? Turns out. Not really.

M was living with her mom because she had a lot of trouble finding work. I don’t know how they were surviving but I knew that it was because of M’s mom’s income of some sort and not hers. M didn’t do much and felt like an uninvited guest a lot of times and I still to this day don’t understand how she got along with my mom. What I also don’t understand is why my mom lent her money. 

So. Here we go. How much do you think my mom lent M? A few dollars? A few hundred? A thousand? Nope.

My mom lent M around $8,000 CAD. This is in 2009 to 2010 money too.

What the f*ck. 

My mom wouldn’t spend $20 on air conditioning. She complained the entire time she was spending money on my tutoring at a rate of around $40 to $50 an hour but for a good-for-nothing friend? $8,000 is nothing! I think this was when I realized that the system of values my mom had for money had quality of life as the last place but also had me pretty close to it. I was definitely not at the top. Asians can be judged by how they spend money right? So what does that say about my mom’s actions? 

Caring for herself and her lifestyle? Very Limited budget.

Caring for me and my needs? Somewhat-limited budget but comes with a lot of complaining along the way.

Giving money to friends? Unlimited budget! 

If you had to summarize about what my mom’s value system looked like, I would say it looked like this:

A Tier Values (EGO)	My mom would almost spent every penny she had for this.	Things that give my mom the moral high ground or advanced her career or prestige.
C Tier Values (Family)	My mom would spend some money here but may complain about it	Anything to do with me or her immediate family.
D Tier Values (Quality of Life)	You’ll probably never see my mom spend money on this one.	Quality of Life improvements (i.e. better food, beds, air conditioning).

You can imagine what my reaction was to all of this. It was “What the f*ck?”. I thought money was fleeting in our family. I thought air condition money was already a lot of money based on how reluctant my mom wanted to spend it but now mom spent $8,000 straight out of nowhere! This was bullsh*t. This drove me crazy. I realized how low I was on her value system and just how solid that value system was. She prioritized her friends over me. More truthfully, it was probably her ego. I would probably word it like so:

“She wanted to feed her ego from this lending of funds to a friend in need thinking it would make her a saint.”

Some would say that she was tricked by her friend and that M was really to blame for all of this but mom’s an adult, this is not an excuse. You don’t just go spending money stupidly when you are in charge of a family. You must think about your finances from your own point of view as well as your family unit’s point of view. You ever hear that when someone commits suicide, they never feel the pain? It’s the family that suffers the tragedy? Well, I believe in this sentiment. So similarily, when you lose money stupidly, be it from gambling or frivolous spending, it’s your entire family and those who know you who suffer because in the end, when you become someone who is in need, they will have to spend time and money to help you out. In the end, it comes out of their pockets. But then again, if you’ll recall, this isn’t something unexpected. I mean just look at where mom’s “family” is on her value system.

Worst of all. M wasn’t even that good a friend. She was a dumb and uncharismatic parasite. She had no outstanding talents or any interests that may have helped us out. She was living off her aging mom and doing nothing but wasting space. What pissed me off even more? She spent the $8000 gambling and lost it all. Then she started to avoid all my mom’s phone calls and stopped showing up at our place. 

My mom at some point wanted to complain to me about this but quickly stopped when I glared at her. 

“This is all you.”

I had zero sympathy for my mom. She had made a poor decision and yielded nothing. I have no idea what she was thinking and to this day still do not. All that I took from this was how stupid she was with money and how she would rather waste money so frivolously on friends rather than using it for something better. Anything better. It would be amazing if it was for me but even if it was donated to charity it would’ve been better than this. What the f*ck. 

I get pissed off from this memory every time I think about it. Why does she deny money going towards herself? Why does she complain about even going to me? Why does she rather blow the money stupidly rather than do anything useful with it when she is a mother? I wish I knew the answer but I don’t. Oh and the worst part of this is, speaking from a future point of view. This wouldn’t be the last time something like this happens either. I won’t spoil too much about the future but let me give you a hint towards my current situation in the present. 

I no longer feel any guilt towards getting money from mom. I now know that if my mom was trusted with money, she would waste it all away. Not only that, the money she wasted would never come to me nor help me in any way. If it were up to me, I would take over all of my mom’s assets so she can’t burn it all away. I’d manage every penny she has and make sure that she isn’t wasting any of it. Have I asked her about this? Yes. But she refused to let me save her from herself. How frustrating. She didn’t trust me with money when she would stupidly waste $8000 away like she did. To put it another way, she knew she was bad with money but just trusted me even less. 

To add salt to injury, when I asked her for all her assets, I already did quite a lot to take care of her home too. Since my mom always wanted to change things around her place but wasn’t very handy, she always contacted me regarding the needs of property maintenance. When asking for help, her house was always “our” house, and her condos were always “our” condos and so on. Whenever she would tell me her house needed electrical work, she would phrase it as, “the” house needed this and that and what were “we” going to do about it. It was never that “she” wanted this. I still do a lot of these chores because, since I am the sole heir to her residence in the future, I kind of thought about it as an inheritance of some sort. But in truth, I never expected anything truly. I figured my mom would sell her properties at one point to pay for nurses to help her when she retires and in the end, I would receive nothing. Regardless, despite doing all the things around the house and also trying my best to keep tabs on her and helping my mom out. She would still not trust me with her financial assets. Her value system was f*cked. Yet by law, I can not take them from her. 

Anyhow, if you’re wondering how Asians spend their money. The answer to the question is…Poorly. The entire situation was wildly frustrating and my mom had no one to blame. Some would say the M was at fault but honestly, my mom should have known better. At some point, you have to think about the old saying “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” You can only be fooled so many times before it is your fault for being so gullible and refusing to learn from your mistakes. 

Speaking of which. I have one last story for you in this chapter. 

My mistake in this time period was even trying to rationalize why mom would give M so much money. I felt distraught. How low was I on mom’s value system? Asians show their true colors with money being spent so what does that mean for my tutoring and use of money? I knew the answer but didn’t want to hear it. That was my mistake, I should’ve known better than to think that my mom cared much about me. There was a defined level of care my mom had for me and it placed me exactly at a specific stop on her value system. I should not have thought about anything else other than this. But I foolishly assumed maybe my mom cared about me. There was a level of money she was willing to spend on me. The minute you pass that threshold, everything else she did was really about her own ego and/or herself.

I recall thinking about a story while I was angry at mom. A story from my past that I would’ve probably forgotten if not for my mom wasting $8000 on her friend. It was a story about when mom used to work at that Chinese after school program for Chinese kids? The one where I met my first two female friends in Canada? Yeah that one.

We had a scavenger hunt one time during a Canada celebration of some sort. We went around and had a rule where if you find two toys from the scavenger hunt, you were done. You weren’t allowed to go searching anymore. When the event started, things were going well. I was especially happy because I found two keychains which I really liked. Sitting on the bench with other kids, we compared toys like kids do and I secretly told myself how my two keychains were cooler than anyone else’s. Furthermore, I was certain that I found mine the quickest as well. 

It was a great day. I was having a blast. But then all the toys got found and it turned out two kids from the program didn’t get any toys at all. So my mom, without even a second thought, came to me and took my two toys. She then gave them to the two kids. She told me that I had to be strong because we needed those two kids to have fun and stay in the program. Then she just left and kept running the events. 

My day was absolutely ruined. On the surface, those two keychains were worth maybe $1 each. But in my mind, they were everything. I held back tears because I did understand that mom’s job was important but I didn’t make it very far. After the event, we were all walking back to the high school where the program had their base of operations and I cried. My mom tried to get me to stop but I couldn’t control it that well. I was around 8 at the time and had truly really wanted those $1 keychains. Mom didn’t comfort me at all and it wasn’t until another staff member came and found out what was going on did my mom finally promise to take me to get a consolation prize. I recall that I got a small lego set from the dollar store, but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t find this one from the event. Moreso, I would never forget how easily my mom simply snatched the toys from me when anything threatened her job. 

This had been a horrible exchange. For around $2 CAD, my mom had bought a core negative memory that she can’t erase from my childhood.