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Bridgid Bergen: It's the Brian Lehrer Show and WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Bridgid Bergen, WNYC and Gothamist reporter. Here's a question for you, are you your parents' retirement plan? Mike Dang, New York Times business editor writes, "My parents do not have a single dollar saved for retirement." Dang and many children of East Asian immigrants, he says, are their parents' retirement plans. What he saves for himself takes into account his parents' needs in their golden years. Does this sound familiar to you?

In many respects, these challenges aren't unique to the children of Asian American immigrants, it can also resonate with first-generation professionals born into poverty, largely with no generational wealth. While children of wealthier middle-class parents might get help from their families to say, buy a home for so many, the burden of financial support goes the other way. Mike Dang joins us now to talk about that responsibility and the light choices people make because of it. His story in the New York Times is called "Their Children Are Their Retirement Plans." Hi, Mike, welcome to WNYC.

Mike Dang: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Bridgid: Listeners, right away we're going to open up the phones. Does this sound familiar to you? If you support your parents or older relatives financially or if you've been raised with that expectation, how do you feel about it? Whether you're the child of East Asian immigrants or our guest, Mike Dang, like our guest, Mike Dang has written about or anybody else, tell us your stories. 212-433 WNYC. Again, the number is 212-433-9692, or you can tweet @BrianLehrer. Mike, what words do you use to describe this obligation?

Mike: The reason why I wanted to focus on these Asian children of immigrants was because of the idea of filial piety, which is based on Buddhist and Confucian concepts of having to honor your parents and support them with love, care, and also support in not only emotional support but financial support. I understand that a lot of different communities and people of different backgrounds often have to care for their parents, but in filial piety, children are raised from the very beginning knowing that this is going to be a responsibility for them. When I was growing up, my parents they always told me, "You need to do well in school because you will one day need to get a well-paid job because you will have to not only support yourself, but take care of us as well, because this is what we did for our grandparents and our parents as well."

It's a tradition that's been passed along from generation to generation, but when I came to the US, I saw that there was a different system where people say for their own retirements using 401Ks and IRAs and employer plans and other things like that, but I didn't know any of that growing up. I always thought, my parents are going to need my help when I get a job one day and that's that. I didn't really understand what the retirement system looked like until I went to college and graduated and finally got a job.

Bridgid: You did weave some of your own story and your parents' story into this piece you wrote. As you started to allude to your parents left Vietnam for the United States in 1975. Where did they arrive and how did they make ends meet initially?

Mike: Yes. My extended family, so not only my parents, but my grandparents and some of my aunts and uncles, they arrived in Savannah, Georgia. They essentially lived together as refugees at a camp, and then were able to get housing together and they all lived in one big house together. Eventually, as they were able to find jobs, they dispersed and started saving money and were survivors and were trying to figure out how to build a life for themselves and to have children and support everyone.

I think when people think about retirement in the Us, everyone is always worried about what happens one day when you stop working and what money will be available to them.

I think for my parents, that wasn't really a thought for them at the age that I was when I was getting a job and trying to figure out what my adult life would look like because they were just trying to survive. They escaped the war, they got on a boat, they did all these unimaginable things that I couldn't think of. Retirement was never something they were thinking about ever.

Bridgid: Did they also provide that financial support to their older relatives?

Mike: Yes. When they were saving money and trying to build a life for themselves, they knew that my grandparents would eventually move in with us. We lived with relatives for a while until they were able to save up some money and when they had enough for a down payment on the house, they brought in my grandparents who moved in with us when I was in middle school. My grandparents essentially needed the financial support from my parents to live out their lives.They still live with my parents right now and are going through health issues.

My parents are caring for them now, and even though they don't have any money saved for retirement, it's not because they were irresponsible in any way. It's just the way that life took them to a place where all their money was dedicated to rebuilding a life for themselves, supporting my grandparents, raising children. I think a lot of people think of when people don't have money saved for retirement as some moral failing. It's like, how could you not have a nest egg at all? Like really no money at all? It's not because they weren't thinking about that, it's just because of their financial circumstances. They didn't really have that and also didn't even know what a 401K is. It was never part of the vocabulary.

My mom, like a lot of Vietnamese women, worked in a nail salon and my dad fixed cars and their jobs, they didn't have 401k plans. They were working blue collar low-wage work and were just trying to figure out a way to survive, but they knew-- I think this is one of the reasons why I think a few years ago people were saying Asian American parents were tiger parents because they raised children to work really hard and get great jobs and are well behaved and all these different things. It's not really that it was because they didn't want me to struggle financially, and they knew that if I were successful, it would not only be reason for me to live a good life, but that they would also feel comfortable knowing that I would be there to support them.

Bridgid: To support them. I want to bring in some of our listeners who this story is really resonating with. Let's go to Wesley in Ditmas Park. Welcome to WNYC.

Wesley: Hi. Thank you for having this segment. I'm going to try to be as de deliberate with my words because in this moment I'm realizing that like I may have to move resentment not towards my mother for this, but may maybe the environment in which I find myself in now as like a well-to-do person with an MBA and my peers. I think it's the responsibility-- I came from Senegal when I was five. I had to join the army to pay for school in New York.

I think throughout high school I would work and it wasn't a thing-- it's explicitly said, but not like "I need you to do well because you're my re retirement plan," but I worked throughout high school and I would give my mom every other check. I don't know, it's prepared me for adulthood. I don't miss payments and things like that, because I'm like, no, there's always something you're beholden to. If I knew at 17 that half my earnings are going to take care of my mom and she did it for her parents, then it's not until you come with to a world where people's parents help pay for their houses, that's like "Oh wait, this is very different."

Bridgid: Wesley, thank you so much for calling and sharing that story. If you're just joining us, this is the Brian Lehrer show. I'm Brigid Bergen, filling in for Brian today, I'm from the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom. I'm speaking with Mike Dang a business editor at the New York Times who's written a piece about when you are caring for your elders financially and what it feels like and what it means for the decisions you make in your life. We're asking, if this story resonates with you, please call us. The number's 212-433 WNYC, it's 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. We're going to go to Gabby in Brooklyn, Gabby welcome to WNYC.

Gabby: Hi, thanks for having me. Yes this conversation really great resonates with me personally. I'm a first-generation immigrant, I'm from Honduras and my parents live in Los Angeles. I came to New York after high school to build a life and I've been in New York all these years. I have built a stable financial life for myself and I find myself now in this position where I feel guilty with my success financially.

I think about my parents they're older now, they're so far away. I feel guilty about my own success sometimes because I have such a cultural responsibility and duty to my parents to take care of them. I want to, but I have to confront this feeling of guilt a lot, am I doing the right thing? Is it okay for me to have this for myself? Some days I want to move and some days I'm like I never want to leave the city. What do I do? It's a very hard sense of responsibility.

Brigid: Gabby, thank you so much for your call. Mike, I just want to give you a chance to react to some of what we've heard so far, I think there's some similarity to the stories that you heard from the people that you spoke with as well.

Mike: Yes. I do want to make it clear that not everyone does this for their parents, there's a lot of children who want to opt out and I did speak to people who didn't want to go into the story because they didn't want to air out all of their family issues. A lot of people do see it as a burden and they feel guilty sometimes that they don't want to have this added financial burden to help their parents out in their retirement.

For a lot of people, it's just a very common experience, the way that I view it I don't really see it as a burden, but I don't really see it as something good that I'm doing either it's just a fact of my life because it's just always something I've known in my life. I understand what Gabby was saying about feeling this guilt because when you are spending some money on yourself, something nice for yourself, sometimes you think, "Hey, maybe this is some money that I could send to my parents instead so that they can do something nice for themselves instead," but you make those decisions.

There's so many decisions that you have to make especially career-wise knowing that you're going to have to earn enough money to support yourself and your parents at the same time. You have to turn down jobs, maybe a job that you really wanted that fits the idea of the dream that you had for yourself, but may not pay the amount of money that you would need to support yourself and your parents.

We had one of the people who spoke to me for the story, Elly Chung. She got offered a job as a restaurant editor which she thought would be so fun to do but it was so low paid that she turned it down to take a series of jobs that she knew would just pay better for herself, so you have to make those sacrifices for yourself. I personally went into a little bit of debt trying to figure out how to support myself and my parents at the same time, and that's just how life is because there are bills and sometimes you don't have enough to pay those bills. When I went into debt I had to scramble and figure out like "Well, I can't stay in the job that's not paying me enough," so I found a new one.

You just figure it out. I should say too that my parents understand that is a financial burden for me and that if for whatever reason I got sick or I lost my job and I lost the salary. Or whatever it was and wasn't able to support them, they've spent their entire lives surviving right, so they would say okay we will figure something out, if you aren't able to do this we will figure something out we've spent our lives figuring it out. Although they do hope that I am able to support them for the remainder of their lives, if for whatever reason I couldn't they would go out and do what they did at the beginning of their lives which was just figure it out and find a way to make their lives work.

Brigid: I want to go to Jennifer in East Harlem. Jennifer, welcome to WNYC.

Jennifer: Thanks so much for taking my call. This is not an issue that I relate to personally since my parents are no longer alive and I came from a pretty affluent background. I do want to say that if we lived in a country and a society that embraced a safety net and government engagement when it comes to social welfare particularly as people are aging, and we are in an aging society, both in this country and certainly throughout the world. Most of the industrialized world does a far better job than we do in caring for people generally, particularly as they age. Would this then fall on and be the responsibility of children to take care of their parents?

I don't believe so, and I think it is a tremendous deficit and enormously serious problem in our country that is only going to worsen. Certainly, if Republicans have anything to do with it with their intent to perhaps cut Medicare, Medicaid, and a variety of other safety net resources, what is the average person going to do when the cost of living, housing-wise and otherwise is getting worse and worse? This is not tenable for the vast majority of people to deal with.

Brigid: Jennifer, thank you so much for your call. Mike, I think what Jennifer is raising there are some of these policies solutions that could address this issue, but I think part of what you are looking at in your story is the cultural backdrop for why this happens. Do you feel like some of these systemic solutions could reduce the burden for someone like you or someone in your situation?

Mike: Yes, I do think if there were a safety net for all Americans, then no, you wouldn't have to rely on any one person, that is absolutely true. My parents came to the US not knowing that there was a system where people were responsible for their own retirements and it didn't really matter to them because culturally for generations and generations children were always expected to support their parents. That was just part of our culture so they weren't even really thinking about retirement as an issue in their lives that they were ever going to have to worry about retirement.

The issue in their lives were raising children well, making sure that they were very well educated and building careers for themselves where they were able to build lives, where they weren't going to struggle financially and were going to be successful and support them. This is something I've heard from a lot of readers ever since that story came out, a lot of people have written to me and said, "Yes my parents were immigrants I'm Korean American, we grew up in Minnesota, they were poor farmers and their big goal was not thinking about retirement but their big goal was to send me to a good school and for me to be successful."

This reader said she went from being a child of poor Minnesota farmers to going to Harvard Law School and now works at a big law firm and earns a lot of money. She says, "It's not a labor of love at all, I'm just to make a lot of money because it's important for me to support them and make sure that I have a good life. This is just how it was I didn't build this career because I love practicing law, this is just something that I knew that would make my parents proud and this is the path that they put me on knowing that this is by design that I was going to be on this road to make a lot of money and be able to support them. I think about that a lot. I'm happy that I'm able to do it, but absolutely am not in a position where I love my job and I'm doing it because I feel any strong idea of practicing law in any way."

Brigid: I want to bring in another listener who has another story, Claudia in Brooklyn. Claudia, welcome to WNYC.

Claudia: Hi. Good morning. Thank you for having me. Yes. My story is very similar to what we've heard. I'm 41 years old, born and bred native New Yorker from Jackson Heights, Queens. Columbian American, education was drilled, so I'm a product of Brooklyn Tech in Oberlin College and work in tech today. I'm happy to have been taking care of my mom for, I want to say almost 20 years, but it does become challenging especially when you stayed in the city to buy a home and things like that. Alzheimer's is very prevalent in our family, so that's what I was preparing for.

I even started a small business to set myself up, to take care of them and to take care of their bills and their plane tickets and vacations and things like that. I've been financially independent since I was 17 years old. Worked three jobs [unintelligible 00:21:35] to go through college, and I'm happy and I'm very proud and honored to be in this country, and literally be part of this American dream, but it's been challenging and we all know that everything is rising. That's my story.

Brigid: Claudia, thank you so much for calling. We'll take one more. Let's go to Neil in the Bronx. Neil, welcome to WNYC.

Neil: Hi. Thanks so much for taking my call, and thank you so much for this segment. Just wanted to share a story along the same vein, but bring up a point that I think often gets lost in the discussion about our current economic state which is also [unintelligible 00:22:23]. I'm also Asian American totally resonated with the filial piety point that was raised, and the attendant pressures. Also a native New Yorker. My parents were able to save for retirement. They're in their 80s now, and we are in a very unique position to be able to do that, but I think something that gets lost in our conversation today is the pressures that inflation has placed on people's retirements.

This speaks a little bit to the caller, I think Jennifer, from Manhattan who raised the point that as a society we have completely not embraced a sufficient social safety net, and so, even those people who are immigrants who have toiled and worked incredibly hard and saved and pinched every single penny they possibly had to be able to save, are now in positions such like my parents, where the cost of living has skyrocketed.

It's not just things like food or plane tickets. People are really experiencing enormous increases in electricity bills and water bills and heating bills, and so when you are an older person on a fixed income or reduced income, even if you have savings, if you see these bills double or triple overnight that places an enormous amount of pressure on you.

Then of course in the context of something like an Asian American family, the family at large, because there is a sense that we all support each other, and that's a central tenet of how we function and how we're structured. Just a point to raise that I think given the current economic situation we find ourselves in, this is a very important and urgent conversation.

Brigid: Neil, thank you so much for your call. Mike, your story is definitely resonating with a lot of our listeners. We have another caller Roberta, from Dutchess County who I think wants to offer at least some suggestions of alternatives that are available for folks to deal with financial constraints who are elderly. Roberta, welcome to WNYC.

Roberta: Thank you for taking my call. Just want to remind you our listeners that there are programs for elderly people who are impoverished. It's HEAP for heating, STAR if you have a home and you can get help with your property taxes, SNAP for food stamps very generous in New York. Also, Medicaid can pay for Medicare premiums. These are really designed for people who have worked very hard all their lives and they're entitled to some help as they get older. Take some of the burden off of their children and other relatives, and most importantly increase their own independence. They get a little help from the government, they can be a little more independent from their children. I think that's a good thing.

Brigid: Roberta, thanks so much for your call. Those are important programs that are available to, particularly seniors, but Mike, they're not always the easiest programs for seniors to navigate particularly if, say, English isn't your first language.

Mike: That's right. Growing up, my parents didn't know that a lot of these programs existed, because they didn't have the outreach in the communities to know, to even apply to a lot of these programs. I do remember growing up having to translate a lot of different forms for them and try to figure out as a child how they were trying to navigate different contracts and school forms and a lot of those different things. I think that it'd be really helpful to have a lot of community outreach for immigrants. I do think that exists in a lot of different areas of the city and in communities, but definitely more outreach to show people that these other alternative programs exist.

Brigid: We're going to have one more caller, let's go to Ahmed in Suffolk County.

Ahmed: Yes. Hi. Can you hear me?

Brigid: Welcome to WNYC. Yes, we can hear you. What's your story?

Ahmed: Yes. It's a pleasure. My spin is, let's turn it way around, because before you have the first generation, that would be your parents who come to America trying to give you a better life, but on my side I was fortunate they send me to America. When I get to America, I was able to fight for my mom. She's 70 now, and if you have a spouse, the two people, it is your time for you to take care of your parents, and now the spouse or your significantly [unintelligible 00:27:10] that it's burden. As I'm talking to you right now, my mom came here, no work, nothing and everything cost money. I have to pay for medical bills. Everything is money. I'm the sole responsible for her right now.

Brigid: Ahmed, thank you so much for your call. Again, Mike, we heard that story in so many different ways from people, from different places around the world, it is really challenging. I'm wondering as a personal finance editor, do you have any advice you'd give people potentially entering the workforce or who expect to at some point either now or in the future, have to shoulder some of these financial responsibilities for their parents about how they might approach it, how they might be thinking about it?

Mike: Yes. The way that I approach it and the way that the sources in my story all approached it is, you just have to think about it as something that you have to budget for and you have to make sacrifices for. As I was trying to figure out my career and how to support my parents, I did have to make a lot of sacrifices. Meaning, a lot of the trips that I saw friends taking in college or during the summers and taking vacation days I just did not take because that money was budgeted for this other thing which was to help my parents pay their electric bill.

I start my story with paying my mom's electric bill and noticing how high it got. I think Neil was the one who pointed out, because inflation and rising energy costs. That was something that I knew that I would have to pay for and account for, so a lot of it is making sacrifices and thinking about ways to budget for, but when you are responsible for someone, whether is your parents or your children, I think that anyone can understand having to care for somebody in their lives. It's always making a sacrifice of some kind in order to support that person that you love and care about. You want to make sure that they are taken care of and are happy and healthy and all of that. Yes. Oh, go ahead.

Brigid: I'm wondering to what extent folks in your generation set these same expectations for their children. Were you able to get into any of that with any of the folks you spoke to for this story?

Mike: Yes. Coming into this country, you follow what your parents are doing. Then, as you get assimilated and you understand the way that Americans think about retirement is through programs like social security, 401ks, IRAs, you just assimilate to that. My generation is not going to expect our children to support us because we understand how Americans live here and that we have jobs where there are employer-sponsored programs, retirement systems that are available to us. In addition to supporting my parents, say for my own retirement, and that is not something that I would ever expect any children I have to do for me.

A lot of the sources I spoke to for this story said the same thing, but in terms of filial piety, that is definitely something that the families I talk to still try to instill into their children and not the idea that you support your parents and provide financial support to them, but that you respect for them and care for them and provide love for them in their old age. I think something that everyone I think can agree with is that instilling the idea that you should respect your elders and think about the sacrifices they made for you and remember that you should care for them, not because of anything that they really did, but because you love them and they're part of your family.

Brigid: We're going to have to leave it there. Mike Dang, New York Times Business Desk editor. Thank you so much for joining us and thanks to all of our callers for your sharing of your wonderful stories, your piece clearly resonated with a lot of our listeners, so thanks so much for joining us, Mike.

Mike: Thank you so much.

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