How many times have I heard it and now ask, how can anyone, indeed, belittle money?
I did—and still do to some extent—think like Daphne Merkin, that rich Jewish girl who found something intrinsically admirable about men who didn’t chase money, at least not in the obvious way that salesmen, brokers, or, for that matter, businessmen do. I myself preferred that one made one’s money as a country doctor, a writer, a teacher, or, at any rate, in professions associated more with a certain sense of nobility than with big money.
My queasiness about money may have arisen from stories I heard growing up about relatives and friends going through all sorts of misery despite or even because of having too much money.
Social potency
I don’t know how big money came to have such a bad reputation; anyway, Merkin writes in “Our Money, Ourselves” (for the American magazine The New Yorker) that “financial success could not compensate for loneliness; it could even be conducive to it.”
Like her, I neither understood money as I was growing up, under the guardianship of Lola Enchay, nor was I allowed, let alone encouraged, to develop even a healthy curiosity about it. In Merkin’s words, “The larger meaning of money—its social potency—was kept deliberately veiled.”
In fact, Merkin likened money to genitalia in that it had no place in social conversation, much less at the dinner table. With my own family, I’m told, it was avoided even at board meetings, if it could be helped.
Merkin writes that a shrink she knew would listen to a male patient’s “sexual fantasies down to its sordid detail,” but that once the subject came up of how much money he made, he would say, “Sorry, but that’s too personal.”
In our family, in any case, there was not much money to talk about. “We were perceived to be rich,” dad would say. “If I told anyone we weren’t, they’d never believe me, and somehow we benefited from that. In this country, it is unforgivable to be poor; it is a crime for which one is punished, sometimes for generations.”
This was, of course, before we exported workers (OFWs), who with their dollar remittances not only lifted their extended families out of poverty but also contributed hugely to the country’s economy.
Stigma
To be sure, my own immediate family was never in danger of becoming poor. The stigma of wealth followed us wherever we went; it didn’t matter if we lived in a rented apartment in an esquinita in Sta. Cruz, Manila, or in a bungalow we owned in unpretentious Sta. Mesa Heights, in Quezon City, my home until I got married.
I have grown to like the idea of having only what I needed and not everything I wanted. There are still things out there that I wouldn’t mind having but won’t chase it. Even if I could afford it, I don’t want to pay the price, part of which is the responsibility of ownership.
According to family lore, grandfather Rafael, knowing well that lola was too proud to ask him for anything, gave her a big household budget. She was proud to tell us that, with considerable savings from it, she bought jewelry, which she regarded more as investment than luxury. Call it pride or a deliberate blurring of money concepts, but the subject was so touchy lolo had to play along.
Lolo and lola were exemplars of frugality. It was how, in fact, the rest of their generation lived. Lola was strict about wastage, whether in food or electricity; she chided us whenever we left lights on, by her frugal measures, unnecessarily. As big as only it should be for their big family, lolo and lola’s house, on Park Ave., Pasay City, could use, I thought, far more illumination than the 25-watt bulbs could provide. But Uncle Marquitos warned me, “Wait till your lola discovers the 15-watt bulbs.”
Worry-free
Vergel, who has had to work for his keep all his life, has no illusions about money, and his priorities remain clear. He is generous and worry-free; he believes in living in the present.
To this day money has kept me both confused and intrigued; and so, too, has my own financial status. Until I started writing this weekly column, the closest I had ever got to earning money was leasing out a piece of property I had inherited from my parents; dad called it calendar-watching. It gave me both comfort and discomfort; in the end the latter prevailed and I sold.
Having thus come into some liquidity, I’m now trying to get some money education, of which a practical part comes from the television show “On The Money.” I’m no longer ashamed of being belatedly interested in money. Indeed, I wish I had started earlier.
But am I rich? I certainly can’t complain; I never feel poor. Thanks but no thanks to the rumor perpetuated about my family, despite every evidence that it is greatly exaggerated.
