More on Chinese Superstition

I recently found out that another reason my parents never had much money when we were growing up, was that they were superstitious about the concept of insurance. There's a belief that in this world you shouldn't get something for nothing, something akin to karma. So whenever we went to the doctor or the dentist, my parents would pay the bills, and they never filed the receipts with the insurance company. Over the course of 20 years, the insurance companies got to fill their coffers with the premiums that Hofstra University paid, while my parents paid for medical expenses out of their own pockets, afraid that if they made claims on the insurance it would just bring further bad luck on them in the future.

Of course, they do now understand how insurance works, and do take advantage of the fact that they have paid their premiums, so they are due the money back for insurance claims. We live, we grow, we learn.