Before we got married, Ryan and I were just two kids from the same grad-school program. Going out to bars with friends, eating at greasy-spoon diners, and having the occasional sushi date were important to me. It was also important to me that we went Dutch, even if it meant I was sometimes putting my half on a credit card.
While we were dating, our focus was more on our immediate plans — like what we wanted to get up to that weekend or what new restaurant we wanted to try — and talking about money felt like planning for the future.
But after getting married and chatting more in-depth about our financial backgrounds and habits, I learned he'd been saving money since he was 4 or 5 after his father made him a piggy bank out of a giant plastic bear that previously held animal crackers. Every extra coin he had was dropped in there, and by the time he was about 10 years old, his parents opened him a savings account, where money from occasions such as his birthday, Christmas, and Lunar New Year was deposited.
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Ryan was taught to be financially savvy so he could support himself and help others
Ryan's dad was big on creating a foundation for Ryan and often said while he was growing up: "There are two types of people in this world: givers and takers. Which one do you want to be?"
After we married, I learned that these principles were deeply embedded in his family. Ryan's grandmother Arlene was an orphan, and when she married his grandfather George Cheng, they moved to the US, where she learned English and real estate, investing in properties in Los Angeles and Pasadena, California.
Arlene took Ryan and his cousins around the globe — to China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Peru, Ecuador, and the Galapagos — to be culturally educated, but it was also important to her that she instill a spirit and legacy of giving back. She and George started the Cheng Family Foundation, which continues to support students and the arts.
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Ryan explains her hard work, her ethics, and her life like this: If you grow up an orphan, you probably have a strong desire never to go back to that sort of life. "That sort of life," I imagine, is one full of instability, uncertainty, and poverty.
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While this wasn't explained in great detail verbally while she was alive, we guess that she made her smart financial moves to ensure that she and her family would never end up in the conditions in which she was born, as well as to ensure that she and her family had not only what they needed but also enough to give back to others who needed help.
A breakup and health incident led me to develop unhealthy financial habits
As for me, I started working as soon as I could, first scooping ice cream at 15, then working service-industry jobs through college and grad school. Now I work full time as a web-content administrator for a public university and do freelance writing on the side. My grandfather Cecil grew up in a small house in Kentucky with his mother and two siblings. I once learned they kept their milk in the creek behind their house to keep it cold.
He was frugal, too. He was a math teacher who saved a lot and supported his wife and two boys, but he was still able to take summer trips across the US, camping along the way. He saved so well that my grandmother never had to work, even after he died.
For a long while, I was good at saving and budgeting, too; I paid my way through a study-abroad trip in high school and took out only small amounts of cash on weekends from my checking account during my first two years of college. It was after a bad breakup with a long-term boyfriend in college that I started using my credit card to treat myself and have fun with friends — something I hadn't done before.
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At first, I used my credit card only for a few brunches here and rounds of drinks for friends there. I paid for things on credit throughout graduate school, paying my card off partially as I could. But it started to really add up after I suffered a major health incident in fall 2017. I had medical bills from multiple stints in the emergency room, and on top of that, I had to navigate paying for an expensive biologic I now needed for the rest of my life to keep my chronic condition in check.
Setting goals and developing better habits helped me break the cycle
A few years later, after Ryan and I got married and had our first child, I realized I needed to shape up my financial practices and get back to my old ways. Ryan was ready to help, and we still have frequent, casual talks and goal-setting sessions where we reiterate some of these financial best practices:
- Don't spend what you don't have.
- Aggressively pay off your debt. You can't save until you do.
- Live within your means.
- Use a budget document or app.
- Break down every paycheck to know what every dollar is doing. Make sure every dollar is working for you.
- Use a credit card only if you have the money to pay it off at that time.
It sounds simple, but putting these tips into practice requires diligence, resisting impulsivity, revisiting larger goals, and seeing what you want for your life in the long term.
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At the beginning of this year, I made it my goal to pay off my credit-card debt entirely. I'm more than halfway through, much thanks to Ryan and his help. I'm realizing, again, the value of being smart with money, and I'm hearing my father-in-law's words: There are two types of people in this world. Thanks to his family legacy, I'm reminded of which one I want to be.
