This is the continuation of the interviews with peoples who grew up in a capitalist system and were raised by parents from a communist society. Click here, to read part one.

6. When did you feel most wealthy?

Vika (Russia): When I gave my grandmother some money that I earned myself for her birthday so that she could buy a couch for her apartment.

Victoria (Poland): When my grandmother would win small amounts of money from the lottery, she would get very excited and take us out on a trip to the dollar store. What was probably about $10-$20 dollars of spending money at the time was made to feel like this huge privilege. 

Joanna (Poland): I would go back to Poland most summers. My parents would put me on the plane and my Grandma would get me on the other side. The first time I went back, I was 8. And over the ensuing years, even though the wall fell and communism retreated,  things were bad. For a while, even worse, so when I went back, I could see how prosperous our life back in Canada seemed in comparison to the village I came from. Even though, compared to others in Canada we were still on the lower end.

7. When did you feel poorest?

Jennifer (South Vietnam): My elementary and middle school were closer to home, so I was surrounded by other lower-middle class families. I went to a higher income high school…and spent time as a teenager comparing myself. This made me feel very poor… like you can see how the other half lives and it’s shocking. Beautiful houses, expensive vacations, cottages, ~*cool~* parents who worked in the arts and drove nice cars and didn’t seem stressed about too much. 

Eddie (Romania): I felt poorest when I realized I had 1k in the bank and loads of debt I didn’t even bother to start paying yet.

Joanna: The first five years here were hard. We lived in a crappy apartment, with very little, and everything was measured and budgeted. In comparison to where we came from it was worse (growing up in the village we didn’t have much but we had wildlife and family, and to a kid that’s the best. Even though Christmas presents were a bag of oranges) for me, but objectively it was better if not in reality, then in possibility and opportunity. But those first years I very much saw for the first time all the things that we were lacking, that others had.

8. What was hardest about growing up with parents who were raised in a different way financially than you? The easiest?

Jennifer: Hardest: seeing them so stressed about money 24/7. It rubs off on you. You just want to see them happy, but a part of you know it’s delayed. Thinking “my parents will finally rest, relax and be happy/proud when I make 250k as a fancy doctor. I’ll pay off the house, I’ll buy them anything they want!” As a child, you’re just worried and always waiting to pay them back for all the sacrifices they made. Any deviation from this path to success fills you with dread and guilt. You are the retirement plan, you are the security they need. You need to be financially successful. 

Easiest: it made me reasonable and good with money. I had a few moments of “I’ve been so deprived! Fuck it, I am going to buy this stupid item!” but overall, despite growing up with not a lot of money… I have a good savings plan, I make good money, I am not in debt. I owe a lot of that to my mother. 

Eddie: The hardest thing was the fact that we weren’t educated on money and what to do with it. The benefit was the fact that we didn’t care to buy things growing up so i don’t have bad spending habits whatsoever.

Joanna: The easiest? I think because in Communism you always had very little, and as a poor immigrant you had very little, I learned not to put too much stock in things. I didn’t really care that much as I grew older. Even now, a couple of years ago my husband asked if we should look into getting a new (used) car. And I replied, “Why? That one works fine.” And he pointed out that it was twenty years old, had rust in places, and one side mirror didn’t quite match in colour. And I pointed out that it worked just fine, so who cares? It gets you from place to place reliably. There was a greater focus on functionality, and repair, and that you don’t need the latest and greatest if what you have works just fine.

Vika: They CONSTANTLY emphasized the availability of things… like my mom told me how she would never forget when bananas fist became available: she was in her early 20s standing in a huge line for the greenest and most hard rock bananas. Or how she would have to go to a big city (take an hour train) to do groceries at the market.

9. What was the best thing that you learned from your parents about money?

Joanna: I never felt the pressure to pretend I had more than I did, and I was never embarrassed to say I couldn’t afford something, even as a grown-up.

Jennifer: Living below your means is not a source of shame. Flaunting obvious markers of wealth is nothing to be proud of. Giving to charity and supporting your community is important. “You never know, you could be poor one day and need help.”

Eddie: I don’t need as many things as we’re lead to believe.

10.  How has being raised by your parents given you perspective on the capitalist system we live in?

Eddie: I realized that unless we know how to manage money and try to make effective moves with it, such as investing, we’ll remain stuck in the same financial situation for life.

Vika: The only thing I can say for sure: [my parents] enjoy the capitalism system we live in and because of that I personally don’t have much against capitalism myself.

Jennifer: My parents worked an obscene amount. They bought into the American/capitalist dream at times. Attending a wealthy high school made me experience the inequality in our city first-hand. At 13/14 years old, I envied many of my peers and wanted to “work hard” to reach this level of wealth as well. 

As I got older, I was able to unpack the systemic injustices that marginalized groups continue to face living within late stage capitalism. I could understand why my parents could not keep up and collect the same amount of wealth as my upper-middle class white peers. This critical analysis of capitalism is something my parents weren’t equipped to do, as they were always in survival mode. It’s difficult though. I feel like I intellectually can deconstruct capitalist beliefs, but emotionally can still be more similar to my parents, feeling like I need a certain amount of capital to survive in an increasingly expensive Toronto. It can be hard to find that balance. 

Joanna: That no society is perfect. That no system is perfect. That money and greed exist in humans, so regardless of the system set up, people will always try to take advantage. That strong government in my mind, is about enforcing equality and controlling corruption in an ideal world. Because Communism and Capitalism both make very little difference when left to the devices of opportunistic people.

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At Rags to Reasonable, I get to hear stories about what money was like in different childhood homes. What discussions were had (or not had) about money. What the recurring tensions were. I get to see how significantly our parents’ financial beliefs and habits influence our own.

I started getting curious about what it might look like for people whose parents had lived in a different economic structure than the one they themselves grew up in. If someone’s parents were raised in a communist system but they themselves grew up in a capitalist country, would there be discord between the lessons the parents were teaching and what these children were absorbing from the culture around them?

I interviewed people whose parents had come from South Vietnam, Russia, Romania, and Poland to examine this question. Some of the people I interviewed were born in Canada and some immigrated as children.

I have edited everyone’s answers for brevity.

1.What were discussions about money like in your household growing up?

Jennifer (South Vietnam): My parents were often worried about money and discussed how much they had to work (they both had labour intensive and factory jobs, working overnight shifts), yet had periods of struggling to make ends meet. Even as our financial situation became more stable, they often stressed about money. The main message we got was: don’t spend too much, do what you can to cut costs, when you get older and make more income, you won’t have to live like this anymore. 

Victoria (Poland): Being in debt was unthinkable. This was instilled in me from an early age. There was a lot of budgeting for household expenses and groceries.

Eddie (Romania): We didn’t really discuss money. My brother and I knew we didn’t have much of it growing up so we didn’t ask for much to begin with.

Joanna (Poland): There seems to be this misconception that a communist society has equal wealth distribution. In theory, yes. In reality, no. When growing up in communist Poland, sure there were rations, but if you wanted anything done, actually done, you had to have money to bribe someone. The bare necessities were always free, but the ‘extras’ were not. Here’s an example: as a child, one day I was playing [with a friend] in the partitioned gardens that each apartment was given. I jumped and fell hard and a rusted nail went into my hand. When I finally was able to see the surgeon in the city (I lived in a village), the diagnosis was that it would [need surgery] Of course, that was covered under basic services in Communism, but the anesthetic was not. Nor did we have the money for ‘the extras.’ Hence, I remember nurses holding me down as I screamed and writhed and cried during the entire procedure. My Mother remembers my screams from the other room, while nurses held her back. I was four.

2. What kinds of behaviours around money did you observe in  your parents that felt different than what you observed around you?

Joanna: For lack of a better term, I think it was respected more. And the sharing of it with someone else was a greater gesture of kindness. I think that also comes from the fact that we arrived here with literally a suitcase. One suitcase.

Jennifer: More caution. My parents hardly ever did anything for themselves. While friends’ parents went on trips, nice dinners, bought coffees, I never saw my parents treat themselves to anything. They often went the opposite route: cutting the rotting pieces off of bread, wearing clothes that were too old and torn, only buying what was on sale. They would occasionally treat my brother and I to unnecessary expenses like school trips and pizza lunches, but these rules did not apply to them. 

Another behaviour I noticed as I got older was extreme caution with investments and savings. They did not pursue riskier portfolios. They wanted any saving to be liquid and secure. 

My parents also made many financial decisions based on a scarcity/fear type mindset. What would happen to you if I died? (Repeated constantly, since I was 4) What would happen if there was a natural disaster or a fire? What would happen to you if x,y,z awful thing happened? I believe this was because they grew up in a war zone, then became boat people (my father was a political prisoner for a number of years), then had to survive in a refugee camp. They wanted money to provide the type of safety that they never really experienced. 

Victoria: Behaviours around saving money had to do with groceries – buying in bulk when there was a sale, or waiting for a sale to buy a product that was needed, even when the savings seemed minimal, then buying so much of that product we’d end up with a year’s supply of aluminum foil or canned beans (for example)

Eddie: We only spent money on what we absolutely needed. Other people had cottages and went on vacations but we never did.

3. What kind of advice did your parents give you about money?

Jennifer: My parents (my mother in particular) were okay with money. She slowly taught herself how to navigate a North American banking system, which felt different culturally and logistically. She did not encourage me to buy into typical symbols of wealth, such as fancy cars and luxury goods – this is a common “new money” trope in the Vietnamese community. She told me stories about how hard it was to work in the service industry, or on the factory floor. Her narrative was that white collar folks will always control and look down on you. True security and agency comes from your savings and elevating your educational (and therefore career) status. My parents were big on respectability politics…

Joanna: That it isn’t easy to get, but that the best and most sure way to get it is to be highly educated and work hard. In my house there was just this implicit expectation that our schoolwork would be the priority, that we would get high marks, and go on to University. There was never ever any other option discussed. Because high education and a good work ethic were always the way to financial stability.

4.Did they encourage you into specific kinds of jobs? If so, what?

Victoria: Yes, they always focused on “prestigious” jobs. My mom and grandma really pushed for lawyer. 

Jennifer: I routinely got messaging about what a “good job” was vs. a “bad job”/”not a real job, more of a hobby.”

Vika (Russia): Anything that would have to do with the English language so that I can leave Russia. They didn’t care what type of job specifically (that being said they are very prejudiced against customer service) but they wanted me to to have some kind of education. They would say that without an education you are “dirt.”

5. What did fights about money centre on when you were growing up?

Victoria: One parent spending more freely, while the other was more careful (frugal) about what was spent. My mom grew up in communist Poland so coming to Canada was a big change for her. It seemed like everything was available. So she would be way more free with her spending. Whereas my dad, who was born in Toronto, was raised by Polish immigrants who taught him to be very careful with money. They had lived through the 2nd World War so they also had a totally different and unique perspective on finances. 

Jennifer: We did not fight a ton about money. As a child, if I asked for something my parents usually replied “I didn’t come all the way to this country and work so hard for you to _____ (buy candy, ask for clothes, buy a CD).”

Vika: The fights would be when one of the parents wasn’t open about what they spent money on. Let’s say my mom would give my dad (she was the “breadwinner” in the house) 6 thousand rubles for my dad to do groceries but he would return home with groceries worth of 3K and would ask her for more money on something else. When she mentioned that he should have had 3K more left, he would say gibberish and wouldn’t really explain what they were spent on.

Joanna: My parents came from a very sexist society, so when my Mom started to outpace my Father in her career and income, things became very tense in the house.

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