Property tycoon Lau Ming-wai isn’t like today’s indolent and wasteful youth.
You see, when his parents gave him a folder containing HK$100,000 (US$12,740) of cash for his 10th birthday, he didn’t flitter it away on trivial things like toys, he invested it.
So when he says kids these days need to sacrifice in order to save and get a foot on the absurdly expensive property ladder, it’s not like you can just dismiss his generous advise as the most ludicrously tone deaf shit ever said.
Oh wait, yeah. Yes you can.
But sorry, Lau, you hadn’t finished.
Please, continue telling RTHK’s money program Money Talk, Talk About This all about how disciplined you were when your parents gave you a massive pile of money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqC8Po9lgqE
“I remember in the year 1990 on my 10th birthday, my parents gave me HK$100,000 (US$12,740) in cash, so that’s 100 lots of HK$1,000 bills,” the property tycoon told Shirley Yam, recalling that, although he wanted to spend the money on toys, he was able to resist such temptations and deposit the cash in a joint-bank account with his mom.
“At that time, I didn’t know what an investment was, but as a kid I knew that you shouldn’t spend money recklessly.”
Wisdom at such a tender age. Remarkable.
It’s that type of savviness, which Lau credits to his parents, that helped the 38-year-old take over the family property business, Chinese Estates, from his father in 2014.
Well, not exactly. He became chairman after his father and Hong Kong’s sixth-richest man, Joseph Lau, was convicted in Macau of money laundering and bribery, which you can read more about at the SCMP.
But, sure. Back to helping young people.
As Lau sat comfortably, unaware of the silver spoon he was sitting on, Yam also asked him about his previous comments, made in 2015, in which he said that young people should stop going to the cinema and flying to Japan if they wanted to get a foot on the property ladder.
Did he, perhaps, feel differently now, Yam inquired, given housing prices continued to surge?
Not really.
“To buy a house, start a business, or study, you need to save money. You can choose not to save money. But if you do want to save money, and this is economics 101, you need to make some sacrifices on spending,” he said.
“It could be seeing fewer films in the cinema, buying fewer books, not using Uber as much. This applies to everyone.
“But you can’t escape the situation; you might not have enough money saved to buy a flat, but does that mean there is nothing else you need to save for?”
Taking up Lau on his rhetorical question, netizens responded by collectively throwing up in their mouths, labelling him a “yi sai zou,” which literally translates to “second-generation ancestor,” a pejorative used to refer to the kids of Hong Kong’s ultra wealthy.
One person offered a pretty good summary of things.
“The most important thing is to have a rich father,” they commented.
Another questioned his qualification to weigh in on such matters as he was “not a normal person.”
Others, in turn, offered their own advice: “Keep living in your own world, Mr Lau.”
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