It is in our Asian culture to give “pocket money” to our parents as soon as we are able to work and earn our own money. Because it is term as being filial in our culture and it has been practiced for many thousands of years, right from my forefathers time. So even though I am currently residing in Canada, my mom would still expect me to send money home to her as a gesture us being filial piety and it gives her a topic to boast to her cronies that even though her daughter is married and lives so far away, we are still thinking of her long distance. You might think that it is a silly culture but you ask any Asian, whether they are from China, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines or Japan, they would understand and give you a long brief about this “pocket money” term.
I’ve been residing in Canada for 7 years now and initially, I wire transfer all those “pocket money” on a monthly basis to my mom through the local bank here. For those who have ever sent money through the bank will know that bank transfers are not cheap at all. I paid close to $25.00 in fees every time I did a bank transfer and the bank back home takes another $25.00 out of the money I sent my mum. My mum was pretty upset because after all it was good money they were taking out from her bank account which she thinks is rightfully hers. But the bank had its rules and there was a charge in receiving foreign funds, so we were told. Convincing my mother that it was quite alright about the fees, just didn’t go well with her for she figured she was losing like a good $400 a year inclusive of exchange rate fees. Money that she could put to good use.
So in order to stop my poor mum from worrying about all those excess charges going into the system, we decided to source for a better solution for our long-term arrangement with wiring money home from Canada. So now we send money home to Singapore to my mum through EPay. EPay is the only one that guarantees low fees for all my money transfers from anywhere around the world. We can send our money to Singapore instantly and without limits. We chose the Recurring/Subscription transfers instead of the Multiple transfer since we do our transfer on a monthly basis. And setting up this subscription was truly easy. And whats best about using EPay is, it only charges a 0.1% transfer fee. So if I send my mom a monthly “pocket money”, i actually only have to pay like $5.00, in which my very old-fashioned mum feels it was reasonable.
I’ve also applied and gotten her a EPAY Premium debit card, so that she can withdraw the “pocket money” any time and from over 1 million ATM machines worldwide. She also now understands that she can use that debit card to pay for her purchases from major store just like those debit cards she can get from the bank. I’ve yet to convince my mum that the EPay debit card can be used exactly like a credit card when she is traveling with her cronies, and not overspending since one can set the limit you want to put into your EPay card. But since it is so convenient to withdraw money from anywhere in the world, I guess the only reason why i would prefer her to use it as a credit card is because I don’t like to see an old lady carry so much cash in a foreign country. When she comes and visit me in Canada, I am going to “train” her personally that way she has no more excuses.