Does money equal love?
August 10, 2016
I don’t think that the only way to express love is to spend money but it’s prevalent in both our family cultures. Well, naturally it’s commercially popular, but I also see this among family and friends who weren’t raised in a capitalist society.
Even among the traditional, Eastern philosophy set, money seems to reign supreme as the expression of love, loyalty, fealty, filial piety.
At Lunar New Year, married couples wish the young singles a happy new year and prosperous life by giving them red envelopes stuffed with cash.
For weddings, we don’t give gifts or make registries. Family and friends show their support of the wedding and the marriage by means of a red envelope stuffed with cash. It’s not called a gift, in my culture, it’s called “tying their hands together” (roughly translated), meaning you’re contributing to the fact of their union. I always liked that.
We never celebrated birthdays except for little kids, and you guessed it, gifts were normally red envelopes stuffed with cash. A wrapped gift item was rare.
Never coins, though, it had to be paper bills. I can’t remember the reason behind it but your envelopes should never jingle, only crinkle.
I see this mentality played out through other aspects of the culture, too, and while I loved some of the traditions, some of them get carried a bit too far.
Love is supporting your kids / dependents financially.
Kids didn’t ask to be brought into this world and a loving and responsible parent should be doing everything they can to make sure their kids are fed, clothed, educated and safe.
But it has to stop at some point, doesn’t it?
When parents are still supporting their kids well past their 20s, and into their 30s, and 40s, even when the kids in question are perfectly capable of supporting themselves, I’m not sure what the game plan was and how it went so very wrong.
I see parents insisting on funding things for their kids that seem outrageous to me when I know the kids are earning very solid incomes and have every opportunity to save for these things on their own: cars, down payments, vacations, household supplies. You have to wonder how the kids are going to manage on “just” their own incomes when the parents aren’t there to serve up another half salary.
Then again, Nicole and Maggie have me asking is it support or is it a gift?
Love is supporting your parents in their old age.
Within reason! Ten years ago, I dreamed of providing my parents a very comfortable retirement. But it was supposed to start closer to my 30s or 40s, not in my 20s.
But it started in my teens and 20s, so I can only provide Dad shelter, food on the table, and utilities fully paid. We’re not going to endanger our financial futures by trying to go overboard and provide luxuries he wouldn’t enjoy much for the look of the thing.
I learned that lesson by observing some cousins who are on financially shaky ground because they did that very thing: their parents were so grabby that the cousins couldn’t save for retirement, couldn’t save anything, really, and ended up needing support themselves. Both parents and kids are to blame in that case – the cousins were well old enough to set reasonable boundaries and refuse to volunteer money for luxuries like retirement and
Love is giving money gifts.
Under the specific rules above: Lunar New Year and weddings, sure. I’ll even throw in graduation presents up through college for very close relatives.
But we don’t do gifts for every occasion. We don’t gift on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc. It weirds me out when people have an expectation of gifts for everyone on every occasion.
Love is treating everyone else to a meal out.
It’s nice to be able to pick up the tab every so often.
But I much prefer paying our own way or taking turns or even just staying in and cooking. Not every meal has to be a dining experience. If you’ve ever seen an all-Asian table get into rugby mode over the bill, well. Let’s just say that following up a nice dinner with a knock down drag out fight a few times means that you’d be tired of this one too. I mean, it’s funny the first few times but …
And if you don’t participate then you never pay, and while always being treated when you eat out may seem nice, I certainly don’t like being that person. Let me pay my own way and have a civilized meal, for the love of Murgatroyd!
I think support vs gift is periodic vs one-off. Support vs enabling, for me at least, is a question of whether the receiving party is trying, whatever that entails given the context and their reasonable abilities.
By the way, love the resesign!
Thank you!
I come from a family of big gift givers, and one where one sibling and his family received lots of enabling support. Hubby’s family is similar. They’ve helped us out by doing things like paying for Little Bit’s extracurriculurs, but then Jon spends a lot of time doing repairs around their house and other things, so for us there is at least some reciprocity.
It’s very difficult to break out of the big gift habits. When I’ve tried, I’ve felt a little guilty for scaling back (because not everyone scales back to the same degree, or at all.)
Emily @ JohnJaneDoe recently posted…Emily’s Investing Story Part 1: Getting Started
Have you ever had an open conversation with your family about it or is that too uncomfortable?
Thanks for the link!
We’ve been wondering about the support vs. enabling a lot since we are both first gen upper-middle-class. We don’t have enough of an estate for our children to live the lifestyle to which they could become accustomed and not work high powered jobs themselves. But we probably do have enough that they could take career risks and know they had a safety net.
It isn’t so bad to be Paris Hilton if you’ve got Paris Hilton’s trust fund, and being Paris Hilton can become extremely lucrative. High risk high reward opportunities aren’t high risk if you have that trust fund.
The problem with those millionaire next door kids is that their parents didn’t have *enough* to allow them to become dilettantes.
nicoleandmaggie recently posted…Why DH is awesome even when he screws up
p.s. I think our next Monday post addresses flow of money in our family circles (and we’re not actually comfortable with it, but figure it’s better to not try to change anything than to try to change anything).
nicoleandmaggie recently posted…Why DH is awesome even when he screws up
I think we’re about the same – we’re not really comfortable with the flow of money but there’s a hard limit on how much we could try to change, if we were willing to tackle it.