Fathers and sons

No, I’m not here to discuss Ivan Turgenev’s novel, don’t worry:).

Here is what I came across yet again and it inspired me to write today. My husband told me about this British colleague of his who lives in Taiwan. Let’s call him John.

John is an IT developer, a really brilliant one. Years ago he was earning 500 USD a day which was a fortune in Taiwan. For years he was living a life straight from the movie “Hangover”, worse even. “Hangover” was just a fun weekend for some bachelor party, but John’s life has been a bachelor party for over 15 years. Well, there was a slight…hiccup.

You see, John had a friend who earned even more and wanted to live even bigger. Fun fact: if you want to sell drugs in Taiwan, you have to be a rich person, really rich. Bizarre, right? So his friend got arrested one day and went to prison and it sobered John up a bit. The money was less from that point, but the party went on. It’s still going on to this day despite him having had a lovely girlfriend for a couple of years now.

I was stumped. Why do guys always do that — have a fantastic opportunity to earn well when young but they don’t think about the future one bit, for example to save?

Same thing happened to my step-dad. He worked in Yugoslavia on these remote job, laying pipes all over the country. For those times he was earning shit…