Ever since I first started working, my mom always gets excited whenever she hears I go on business trips. For her, all she seems to hear is “free hotel and food,” and so she thinks it’s extremely luxurious to have the privilege of free lodging and meals. While yes, it is very nice and convenient to have your temporary housing and food paid for, it’s not like it’s just a “you take” situation. You are getting free food and housing in exchange for your professional services that you are offering on behalf of your company. It’s very much a transactional expectation.

It has not always been that luxurious, though: at one company I worked at, I only had a $75 per diem, so that was challenging when I went to larger, more expensive cities, especially once you factor in tax and tip. Today at my current company, I have $125/day, which is the highest I’ve had anywhere. It’s a nice and reasonably generous allotment, but again, dinner time tends to be challenging to stay within guidelines if you’re in a larger city.

Sometimes, I feel sad that my mom doesn’t know what it’s like to travel for work. She worked hard her entire life in a white-collar setting, but she never had the opportunity to “move up” out of the equivalent of an admin role. She looks at me going on work trips, and she thinks it’s all fun and games, wining and dining. She doesn’t quite see the “work” part about it; she focuses on the “trip” part of it. At the same time, I also get a little annoyed that all she focuses on is the “free” stuff I get. My mom grew up quite poor, as did my dad. Today, they have far more than they will ever be able to spend on themselves. Yet somehow, they are still obsessive about anything that is either extremely cheap or free; they are like the millionaires who jump at free stuff and hoard everything they humanly can. I can see how that’s the poor person’s mentality, especially with immigrants like my mom, people who had to work very hard to get to their comfortable standard of living today. But in my parents’ situation, they erroneously believe they are still poor or are at risk of being poor any day, so they try to take anything they possibly can that is free or cheap to make their money last even longer. I grapple with what to make of it. I would like for them to be comfortable, to enjoy life, to acknowledge that they have far more than enough and are quite privileged with all that they have (and have earned), but I doubt they ever will.