Immigrant Families Have a Different Idea of Rich

People used to tell my mom she was missing a tire hubcap. She’d laugh. That was the only hubcap on the car. The other side had none.

The people who pointed it out were almost never new to America. They were usually people whose families had been here for over a generation.

How rich you feel depends on who you compare yourself to. Many American status symbols didn’t register for us.

We compared ourselves to Juárez

My parents are from Ciudad Juárez, right across the border from El Paso. There, poor people lack indoor plumbing. Our family in Mexico wasn’t poor, but they earned less than we did in America.

The years my family reached $40,000 to $60,000 a year combined, we felt rich. The social circles we compared ourselves to, our reference group, were in Mexico.

What “enough” looked like

Can you get to work? Can you give your kids a stable, loving home? Everything else was extra.

“There’s beans at the house” might be the most common phrase in Mexican households. A $2 bag of dry beans makes about three pounds of food. Once I asked if we could stop eating so many beans. That ended in a speech: what unites every Mexican household, rich or poor, is that there’s beans at home.

Growing up, we’re taught that supermarkets are full of expensive things with good marketing but all you need are the raw staples: pasta, lentils, bread, vegetables, deli slices, and eggs. Only at friends’ houses did I learn that other families bought lots of ready-made meals, sometimes enough to fill two fridges.

Thrifts stores have excellent toys and household goods. If you needed something new or wanted to splurge, there was Ross, Marshalls, and Burlington.

Our phones cost $20 to $40 a month, on prepaid plans from the dollar store, Walmart, or the Hispanic part of town. Later I learned most families paid more for AT&T or Sprint, because prepaid plans supposedly had bad customer service.

We brag about cheap cars. A $1,000-$6,000 car that runs great for five years is what you told friends and family about.

Even now, when I shop for a car, I call my family for advice on judging quality. If I wanted one pricier than $6,000, they’d ask: Does it have a lot fewer miles? What’s the point? They wouldn’t say no. Spending your money how you want, even to impress people, is part of why you come to America. They’d just want me to know why I was doing it.

Our normal was a very basic basket of goods. We were taught not to drift past it without meaning to, even when everyone around us did.

“Los Americanos”

In a lot of immigrant communities, “the Americans” means people whose families have been here for generations. It isn’t quite a compliment. It hints at being a little out of touch, used to a life of extra. The kind of person who’d worry about our missing hubcap.

We said it while loving this country.

I’m on a ~$60 T-Mobile plan now. When I mentioned it to my family, I explained it includes Netflix, and it works abroad, so I don’t have to buy a local plan every time I travel. I felt out of touch saying it.

My brother buys MacBooks that are a few years old. They cost a fraction of the price and work just as well for him. I’ve bought used iPads and iPhones too. When I buy new, I know I’m splurging.

Berries and the ice cream brand “Ben and Jerry’s” are expensive. I don’t need it, but I love it.

I buy real Tupperware even though I know butter and yogurt containers work too. I like seeing what’s inside and lids that don’t leak.

My family taught me to ask: Does it make you happy? When you get something you want but don’t need, are you spending consciously?

This was freeing.

Because we didn’t need much, we could save a lot once we reached our American dream. My brother saved half his pay in the Marine Corps. I saved almost the same over ten years in diplomacy and policy jobs. We didn’t know the other was doing it until years later.

Immigrant parents push their kids toward medicine and law because they want safety. Keeping our spending habits got us there faster.

Then we hit a question our parents didn’t get to ask: once you’re safe, what’s the money for?

My brother worked out how little he needed to live on and invested his savings until he didn’t have to work.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, he volunteered for the front lines.

He left America and his comfortable consulting job. This was meaningful to him. In Iraq and Afghanistan, he’d fought beside local soldiers who had no peaceful life to go home to. He still lives in Ukraine, helping build its tech sector and keep foreign visitors safe.

My version is mundane. I left diplomacy and opted into a life without a steady paycheck. I left to do independent research, with no plan to start anything. I’d spent so long focused on earning security that walking away from it took a lot of trust in myself. Like so many entrepreneurs, I figured out the least I could live on for a while. That meant I could follow the work wherever it went. It led to an amazing organization I didn’t expect to get to build.

A friend who grew up wealthy told me he’d love to do what I’m doing but he can’t. He grew up in a big house with a college fund for a $60k+ a year university. He feels he owes any future kids the same.

Any kid of mine raised in a loving home in America would be among the richest 10% of people in the world. Most Americans never feel that, because the people who had it worse lived in the past or are living in other countries. First generation immigrants get to feel the difference.

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