Carmel Valley schools are not Cupertino's means what? That Cupertino's are much better?
Yes. And for that matter, CV schools (so I have heard from peers in Orange County), aren't as good as Orange County schools). But, I'm sure it falls within the margin of error.
Yes, Asian's don't have higher incomes, but they generally are careful with their purchases. So the non-Asian takes out a equity loan to get pool and 50K Beemer, while the Asian buys the Camry and Accord. Many Asians dont feel the need to show off in that matter, only in educational, professional and classical music pursuits. It is good to have diversity, otherwise half the stores in the USA would close overnight.
I'll try not to generalize on asians etc. Just some observations though about the chinese community….
I would say at least in san diego, I don't think the mass majority of Chinese here are "rich" in the sense of insanely rich as you would see in other parts of CA. Namely, S.D. is not known for being melting pot for the chinese community. That's where LA, BayArea, and NY are. Most people prefer to settle in those cities.
The majority of the chinese community are here are professionals/enginerds, and I don't think they have higher salaries than others here. S.D. really lacks diversity when it comes to companies, and I see in some places still have the old sort of "hick" attitude of who should be in management and who shouldn't (no offense for using the word "hick". I just don't know how else to describe it).
…. But I would say that a good portion of the chinese are able to manage money reasonably well. I won't say if it's better or worse than others…just that it's reasonably well. A good portion family of have dual income families with hubby+spouse making about the same (communism did a pretty good job of equilizing things in terms of professions of men and women). In addition, some of them got lucky being in the right place at the right time at various companies in SD.
Culturally, traditional chinese folks aren't use to "credit" or "loans", and given the choices of (1) carrying a larger loan principle of 5% and tucking away the rest in a savings that earn 6% or (2) paying off more of the principle, many would choose #2 versus #1… simply because the larger the loan, the more in debt one feels (which isn't a good feeling)
Overseas, you pay cash. Some of us who grew up here or assimilated, though, use to credit to much more of our liking, often mainly to get the bonus rebates/etc as sort of a penny-pinching exercise. You typically won't find too many of the traditional chinese folks taking a heloc to buy a bimmer or tv etc, though there is a trend going on in Taiwan that some younger women financing their designer bag purchases, either through traditional credit financing or non-traditional credit financing (aka sugar daddy approach). Here in the U.S., if you do see an older guy/gal driving an expensive vehicle, more than likely either (1) it's paid for or (2) it's leased as a business expense…hence the jokes about when asked by a Pardee sales rep if you prequalified, just answer, "no we're paying cash"- sometimes it works, at least.
Doing business with chinese, often times it's more difficult to sell something to him/her 25 cents more than he/she wants to pay, if the good/service is for him/her. However, if it's for their kids education/future pursuits/etc, theoretically there is no limit of how much parents would be willing to spend. Hence, why you would have a chinese couple spend several hundreds and thousands of dollars to live in an area "with a good school district", only later to spend additional thousands of dollar to send the kid(s) to a private school or hire a personal tutor/etc. So the lesson to learn here is the fastest way to a chinese couple's wallet is through their kids. If this is all new to you, use this new found knowledge to bettering your own financial situation by catering to this niche.
Some of us second and third generation folks who were born here grew up with all the needy/whinny/wanting/self-entitlement feelings that is prevalent in parts of this society. Hence, we tend to spend more than our previous generation….Fortunately, most of us had parents that made sacrifices for us and taught us the value of a good education/profession, so in general most of us can finance the more needy/whinny/wanting/self-entitlement lifestyles and/or know when to cut back.
How our kids turn out, though, remains to be determined.
