Mommy Bloggers
The Ang Pow Dilemma
by MamapumpkinPosted on 08 February 2011
Ever since I got married, I’ve had this problem every year wondering just exactly how much ang pow money to give out to family and friends. Do we follow what is perceived as the ‘market’ rate? Do we go above ‘market’ rate or do we go below? Who gets how much? And all these years, to think I got it all wrong!
One year, I gave RM1500 to someone I loved but then felt that it wasn’t appreciated at all so the following year, I gave that same person RM100. I also wondered, if you gave someone a big amount, would that person keep expecting a big amount? Alternatively, would that person think I was such a cheap-skate? I’ve also known people who gave RM10 to all the kids at preschool and then suddenly RM100 to one of the rich families at the preschool. I wondered what her motive was. Was it fear that the rich Mom would think she was a cheap-skate? Did she want the rich Mom to perceive that she could afford more? Or did she simply want to suck up to that rich Mom?
In the last few years, I’ve decided to give the bulk of our ang pow budget to our parents because we are the most thankful to them and then everyone else gets the ‘market’ rate short of a few special family members. But this year, I actually wanted to increase our budget for everyone because truly, I was feeling very blessed and wanted to share the love and then my husband came home and burst my bubble that our ang pow budget has to be cut this year. What? Why?!!! Because we had no income for a few months and accumulated too much debt, that’s why!!! And there I was happily planning to double our ang pow offerings *sigh*
As a child, receiving ang pows to me was all about collecting money. And yes, I could put a face to an ang pow. My grandmother would give my cousins (her favourite grandchildren) RM50 and we would get RM2 – such discrimination. All the aunties would give us RM2 except for Aunty S, who always have more. It was terrible! And I am intent that my daughters don’t see ang pows as money making means. Currently, they are too young to understand the value of money and my 6 year old daughter hasn’t even bothered opening ang pows to check how much money she’s received yet and to be honest, I haven’t either. But it will be just a matter of time before they do start doing that, I think? It would be something interesting to observe and certainly, when the time is right, I will be teaching them the gratitude of receiving an ang pow, ANY ang pow, in the first place.
We now have a smaller ang pow budget this year but what I’ve learned is that it really doesn’t matter how much you give to people. By the mere fact that you are giving and ang pow to someone, you are already wishing them good fortune and if the recipient were so shallow as to think us cheap-skates, well, they obviously have problems themselves and would have to answer to God later. It isn’t our business.
What about you? What is your ang pow culture?
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