Fotografo de Bodas, Santiago

September 8, 2008

“Every time we go out to eat with his friends everyone is calculating their meal cost down to the last penny so they don’t pay a cent extra. They usually end up paying less than they should because most of the time they stiff on the tip too,” a Gringa once told me about going out to eat with her Chilean husband’s friends, “Why can’t we just split the bill down the middle and call it a day?”

I understand. We’ve definitely had an occasion or two when we’ve been out with friends who didn’t want to leave a tip and S. and I have had to make up the difference.

And sure, my mother in law has a vacuum that was basically the first vacuum ever invented. A caveman in South America somewhere made fire, then worked a little harder, made this vacuum and it somehow ended up in S.’s childhood home where it’s stayed ever since. Every two years or so since I’ve lived with them they’ve taken it to get repairs done and even so it barely works. The tube is actually taped on to the body with duct tape and while it’s louder than anything I’ve ever heard it’s actually incapable of sucking any dirty up. If you wanted this vacuum to actually clean anything you’d have to just leave it running over the same spot for at least thirty minutes. Why doesn’t S.’s mom get a new vacuum, one that works? I suspect the first reason is that she doesn’t have to actually vacuum herself since she has a nana so how well it works isn’t a huge concern for her. And the second reason is that she’s cheap.

When S. and I were debating whether to marry in Chile or in the U.S. obviously one of the factors was if our parents would be able to come to the wedding. He said, “Well if we get married in the U.S. we’d have to pay for my mom and dad’s tickets because they wouldn’t be willing to pay for him.” He made it sound like his parents are too cheap to go to their own son’s wedding. That’s not the case, they just flat out don’t have the money to up and travel to another country, whereas my mom is perfectly willing to get a flight and charge it to her credit card.

Yet, I would hesitate to classify Chileans as cheap, even though that seems to be a common complaint amongst my Gringa friends. I think they were just raised to live within their means, and that’s not a bad thing. Sure, since I’ve worked as a waitress, I’ll always say, “If you can’t afford to tip when you go out to eat, you can’t afford to go out to eat period.” But, in general, I doubt that most Chileans grew up in an era of, “You want it? Charge it.”

I know a lot of Gringas have grandparents that lived through harder times than our parents did and we may now think they’re cheap because they think $10 dollars is an expensive meal out. But, is it really fair to call them cheap when that’s just the way they were raised? We have to remember that a lot of them probably had parents who may have been more financially cautious after having lived through things like the Great Depression.

Chile’s prosperity is a recent thing and most Chileans are not used to spending like crazy U.S. consumers do. Only in recent days have the people of this country started using their credit cards so much. Now 61% of all households in Chile have some debt. The average household without homeowner’s debt factored in has a credit debt of $2.9 million pesos, which is more or less $5,800 dollars, assuming an exchange rate of 500 pesos to the dollar.

I don’t think Chileans are cheap. I just believe that my generation has grown up spoiled rotten with parents, that until now, didn’t have to worry too much about economical problems like recessions and the home owners credit crunch. We’re not used to being around people that actually live within their means so it comes as a sort of shock to our systems.

4 Comments

Subscribe to comment feed

Facebook comments:

4 Comments

I think it’s a combination of several factors. Customer service here is usually crap, so tipping isn’t as big a deal here. Plus like you said, the idea of spending money on luxuries like going out to eat or buying a new vacuum is a relatively recent one in Chile. That said, the younger generation now seems to have no clue what to do with credit and is just racking up more and more debt, especially in less educated populations.

I can see how many foreigners (especially from the US/Europe) would think Chileans were cheap. As you pointed out, it’s often just not possible for Chilean families to do things like travel internationally. It’s easy to say “you’re just lazy/cheap, why don’t you get a job and save up” until you look at salaries and see that saving is virtually impossible for most people in this country. When you’re living paycheck to paycheck – as many people in perfectly respectable/professional jobs do – it’s hard to be a big spender.

That said, Chileans are really generous in other ways. I’ve never not been invited to stay for dinner or offered tea or coffee, for example. Just goes to show that generosity and money don’t always go hand in hand.

Comment by Emily — September 8, 2008 @ 10:52 am

Reply
I definitely agree with your last point Emily! I think even the family’s that have the least are always so willing to invite anybody over for a meal. When I worked for Un Techo Para Chile one of the family’s whose house I was working on, aside from the food provided by Un Techo, made this huge lunch for the volunteers. I mean, you KNOW that these people don’t have the extra money to be throwing around on a cake for a bunch of cuicos that are building them a little house yet they did it anyways.

Comment by Mamacita Chilena — September 8, 2008 @ 10:58 am

Reply
I want to agree with you, but with some people that really isn’t the case. Ro’s friends for a long time thought that Ro and I had to pay more when we pitched in to buy alcohol just because I am American and Rodrigo’s father is the president of Transant taxi company. One of Rodrigo’s friends asked us to go shopping with him one day and it shocked me because he was always the biggest pain in the ass to get 500 pesos from to pitch in for the nights drinking. He went out and bought an expensive leather jacket to this day I have seen him wear it maybe 5, 6 times. I think for him the whole spending thing is he spends his money on luxury things for himself, we have to fork up the extra from my paycheck, he gets his money from mommy and daddy,and it seems completely unfair. Also, Ro and I are tight asses when it comes to going to a club or disco. This guy on the other hand, he will gladly spend his money going there then to put in 500 pesos for a cheap bottle of rum. I see a difference in my husband, he would rather spend money his father gives him on having fun, but when it comes down to his paycheck he will spend it responsibly.
The whole credit problem yikes! If you have a credit card from a store like Ripleys and rack up a huge amount of bills and don’t pay eventually they will tell you to pay a small fee and every little bit of the debt disappears, so why would you ever pay credit bills in the future if the first one just disappeared?

Comment by Shannon — September 8, 2008 @ 12:32 pm

Reply
Ooooh my husband’s not cheap and I LOVE it. Except that in Chile he ends up paying for everyone else which I don’t love so much.

And PISSING MYSELF at the vaccuumm (how many ccc’s uuu’s and mmm’s?? We call it a Hoover) cleaner story – that is EMBEDED in my mind FOREVER. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Will you take a picture of it and post it. I’m STILL laughing at a tiny little tube-sized circle of clean carpet gained after jamming the tube down into the carpet and holding it there for half an hour. LOVING it.

And probably better than a Dyson which shows you all the mankness you’ve been LIVING IN before you vaccuumed. Gross.

Comment by Raybelles — September 10, 2008 @ 12:19 am

Reply