Hong Kong phone plans come in two kinds: prepaid SIMs, top up and use, and contract plans that bind you for 24 months. I’ve been on prepaid for six years — three hundred HKD a year, tops. A contract? I ran the numbers once: defaulting at worst costs you twelve thousand. So I never understood people who sign contracts — until I put every defense on trial, one by one, and the trial ended at my own doorstep.
The Trial
My verdict used to be simple: think about it — rich people are rich because they’re stingy, because they do the math. Who would take on the risk of owing twelve thousand? A prepaid card costs almost nothing up front, three hundred a year at most, and you still carry the risk of a twelve-thousand debt.
The defense had plenty of witnesses. Company reimbursement requires contract invoices — but most individuals don’t get reimbursed. Family plans make each line cheaper — except the primary holder signed the contract, and the debt lives in someone else’s name. Lazy people don’t want to top up monthly — I haven’t forgotten once in six years; that excuse filters out forgetting, not choosing. Switching costs are high, all your bank bindings break — this one collapsed fastest: Hong Kong has number portability; one form and you walk, cost halved on the spot. The hardest remaining witness: some people calculate expected loss, not absolute amounts — for someone billing two hundred an hour, spending an afternoon to save two hundred a month really is a losing trade.
When the trial adjourned, little survived: information gaps, sales interception — street shops, welcome booths, unboxing vouchers for supermarket coupons, every touchpoint aimed at people who don’t research — plus a contract that hasn’t expired. Not an intelligence problem. A market structure that pre-solves the math for anyone who’d rather not do it.
My Mother
And here the trial stopped. Am I too rational? I genuinely do this arithmetic. But some people have never done it once. Like my mother: forever on some 100-plus-yuan-a-month plan, and she has never once done the math. She doesn’t even use that card anymore, and it’s still charging her. She’s never counted.
It’s not that she can’t. Whether a 100-yuan plan fits her usage could be settled in half an hour. She just never ran the calculation — not once. The card doesn’t take much money, and what it takes isn’t money: it’s a habit of never starting. I spent an afternoon trying whether contract-signers are fools, then turned around and found someone at home who had already answered for everyone.
Starting
So why are the rich rich? Because they’re stingy, because they do the math. Everyone hears it; almost nobody does it — because it sounds like a gift, like cleverness, like personality. It’s none of those. It’s a motion: list your fixed monthly expenses, and ask each line one question — is this number right? Thirty seconds per line. People who can do the math aren’t faster calculators; they never stop. People who can’t aren’t incapable; they’ve never started.
Stinginess isn’t a personality trait; it’s an action. Doing the math isn’t cleverness; it’s starting. My mother’s card is still being charged today — and what it charges isn’t a hundred yuan a month. It’s the habit of never having counted. You don’t need to be good at math. You need to do it once.
