What? No savings? But, but you are already 50 years old? What will you doing when you get older and cannot work to support your basic life? How will you support your child even your wife? If you get sick, how can you pay all the expensive medical bills? Within one minute of hearing that this man doesn't have any savings, such question popped up my mind.
Oh ,my....my god!
I couldn't believe that there are people who don't have any savings. In this life, we are not sure what will happen tomorrow, someday and somewhere we will need money to save us, our family especially if it's an emergency. Although money is not everything, we can’t deny the fact that we need it to live.
All my questions have been answered that many Japanese don't really save money but rather they only think how to spend their money. What? Are you kidding me? That raises more questions but it's really true. For a Chinese who always thinks on saving money, this is hard for me to believe. After staying in Japan for a while, I noticed that every 25th of the month, the pay day of almost all the workers here, they spend almost all their money but 15 days after that then they feel sad since their money are almost gone by this time and they need to think how to budget their money that has been left until the next pay day.
Oh no, that's not true?
Oh, unfortunately it is.
One of my Japanese friend told me, "It's not that Japanese don't want to spend their money, it's just that nothing can be saved," he also added, "You know, Jenna, unlike in China that both parents are working, families here in Japan still rely on one person usually a man to support their big family. Let's take one common example, a typical family who consist of the parents and three kids. Since the last child is still a baby then the mother would stay at home to look after him/her and of course some house works. So as we all assume, the husband will be the only who will work and support all five of them. In this case, how can they really save money especially if the other two children are studying? No savings is a normal way for them to live their lives." This is what my friend told me but it made me wonder "What if the husband will be fired or will leave his job, then what will happen to his family?". He said, "That can be, but unlikely, in Japan, once a company hires an employee, they will stay there for almost all of their working life unless they do something really bad for them to be fired. If that happens or if the man decides to quit his job before he retires, then he can take a part time job to support his family." Oh, finally, I get it.
How about you ,my dear? Do you have savings or are you just like some Japanese-never save money?