Читать книгу Millionaire Teacher - Hallam Andrew - Страница 7

I wasn’t rich as a 30-year-old. Yet if I wanted to, I could have leased a Porsche, borrowed loads of money for an expensive, flashy home, and taken five-star holidays around the world. I would have looked rich, but instead, I would have been living on an umbilical cord of bank loans and credit cards. Things aren’t always what they appear to be.

In 2004, I was tutoring an American boy in Singapore. His mom dropped him off at my house every Saturday. She drove the latest Jaguar, which in Singapore would have cost well over $250,000 (cars in Singapore are very expensive). They lived in a huge house, and she wore an elegant Rolex watch. I thought they were rich.

After a series of tutoring sessions the woman gave me a check. Smiling, she gushed about her family’s latest overseas holiday and expressed how happy she was that I was helping her son.

The check she wrote was for $150. Climbing on my bicycle after she left, I pedaled down the street and deposited the check in the bank.

But here’s the thing: the check bounced – she didn’t have enough money in her account. This could, of course, happen to anyone. With this family, however, it happened with as much regularity as a Kathmandu power outage. Dreading the phone calls where she would implore me to wait a week before cashing the latest check finally took its toll. I eventually told her that I wouldn’t be able to tutor her son anymore.

Was this supposed to be happening? After all, this woman had to be rich. She drove a Jaguar. She lived in a massive house. She wore a Rolex. Her husband was an investment banker. He should have been doing the backstroke in the pools of money he made.

It dawned on me that she might not have been rich at all. Just because someone collects a large paycheck and lives like Persian royalty doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is rich.