How to save like a true NRI!
Get a calculator. You are in the eighties (1980’s). A dollar is like 40 rupees! If you make $40,000 after taxes every year and spend the bare minimum on your living expenses, say about $8000 a year, then in ten years, you save up a tidy sum of about 350,000 + (including interest on the savings). In rupees, you make about 1.5 crores , which was a heck of a lot of money in the eighties (in real terms , about five/six crores of rupees in 2020). Then you can go back to India and live like a king!
However, a miser makes others miserable!
I was a houseguest in Swapan’s uncle’s house in New Jersey. All I was asking was how to get back in the house after I return from a trip to nearby NYC. The conversation with Swapan went like This:
Swapan: “After you ring the doorbell, jump !”
Me: “What? Why jump?”
Swapan: “Then Chachi can see the top of your head, or even your face if you jump high enough. Try to jump vertically as high as possible, so that she can recognize you. Then she will ring the buzzer to the outside door. Run, because the buzzer keeps the door open for a few seconds only.”
Me: “Then…?”
Swapan : “After you open the outside door, ring the buzzer next to Apt. 1A. Oh, that switch is kind of broken, so make sure you don’t get a shock. Chachi then would ring the buzzer for the inside door. After you open the inside door, come to Apt 1A and there is a final doorbell on our front door. Ring that and you are in my friend!”
Me : “Just saying, can’t Govinda chacha install a security system with a camera and such? Other houses have those!
Swapan laughed heartily at this. He knew his uncle inside out.
Chacha didn’t have any extra beds so we put down blankets and bed sheets on the living room carpet.
Me, my friend Swapan and his wife, and their baby slept on the floor.
We woke up at the noise of scurrying insects.
We turned the light on. About fifteen rats scattered away in fright! These were no squirming bugs,
Swapan’s wife sat on the couch, wide awake, holding the baby all night. The rest of us slept off and on, wary of the rodents’ return.
In the morning, Swapan was furious. “Why doesn’t he get rid of the rats, Chachi? This is America, after all, you don’t have to live like this.”
Well, any improvement in Chacha’s lifestyle would have exceeded his annual maintenance budget of $8000 (for a family of three), so the answer was a no!
We could have gone to a cheap motel, but we didn’t. We suffered for two nights.
Govinda chacha attained his savings target . Quit his permanent job in USA and returned to India with the money.
Did he live like a king?
Did his American born daughter rebel in her teen years?
Did he invest his crores in the Indian stock market and lose most of it?
Did his wife finally become crazy after living with the miser for twenty-five years?
Well, all of the above!!!!
Is this a true story? Yes, actually the truth is even more bizarre, so I am not sharing it with you. Cheers