I am somewhat confused as to money management. Alot of old school elders here thinks you ought to save every penny you earned. You know like imagine saving millions of NT with no specific goals in mind (like business or house) to me it seems somewhat absurd. I know its good to save some money (probably like 50,000 nt) in case of emergencies like layoff or whatever, but I see no point saving millions if I have no specific goal in mind. Plus its hard enough living on the salary let alone try to save any significant amount of money. How should one spend their cash???
women and cheap liquor…or was it liquor and cheap women? :s
Very good reasons for saving a lot of money for no apparent reason to the elders’ mind set.
Back in the day, you didn’t have what we would call social services or any social safety net except for the one you built yourself. So if something happened to you, you really did need some way of protecting yourself and this was in the days before disability insurance. So people saved up a lot of money so that they could protect themselves and live through any great calamity that befell them.
Your specific goal could be retirement, i.e. unless you have some private pension or a government to take care of you on what else are you going to live on except your savings?
Keep in mind that most Asian countries do not have social welfare systems (or at least none to the extend as some Western countries), so you are pretty much on your own when you get old.
Also education of your children could be a good reason to save some pennies, though as before if and how much money that requires does depend on where you live.
And then there is healthcare - NT50000 is nothing if you have no insurance and need some serious surgery / treatment.
There are probably more reasons that one could think of, but as pointed out it depends on where you live and what kind of arrangements you have made / subscribed to.
Then of course you could just save your millions and hand them down to your offspring when you leave this place. 
I think the strange thing is not saving money without a goal, but not having a goal. I am sure you must have some sort of goal. Buying a car? Buying a new scooter? Going on a trip? Maybe you need a goal?
One goal could be to have enough money to take advantage of an opportunity if it comes along. To quote a recent best seller, “Don’t work for the money, make the money work for you.” Before you can do that, you need to save the money.
Hobart,
You sound like my rich dad. 
One does not need a large amount of money to start investing for the future. An US index fund can be opened with 3k US and added to im 100$ increments. Compounding interest takes care of the rest. It is also cheaper to open a fund in Taiwan if your SO in Taiwanese.
Or one could open a direct investment plan (buying stock directly from the company and reinvesting the dividends) with a dividend paying company, like GE or MO or hundreds of other companies and again, put small amounts into them each month/bi monthly. Just be consistant.
The idea is “pay yourself first”…into your index fund or whatever…bonds. But if you save your emergency money, should be enough to live off for 6 months ideally, in the bank, money market, etc…after that money in the bank is NOT a great idea as it just doesnt keep up with the rising costs of living…stocks always outperform other investments over the long term.
check out fool.com for more information. 
peace
I don’t think he’s asking about how to save, but more about the why.
In our societies, people who spend are increasingly held up as the ideal model for all of us to follow. Look at the ads on tv advertising cashcards, credit cards… It’s definitely a lot sexier to spend than save money. However, the consequences of living in a spend today culture are quite obvious in respect to the United States… Debt skyrockets, bankruptcies jump, people commit suicide because of these problems, and that’s even before there’s an economic downturn…
I’m sure other people can complete the list for me.
Kenneth
[quote=“KenTaiwan98”]I don’t think he’s asking about how to save, but more about the why.
Kenneth[/quote]
Why? Just look at the old people pushing carts full of cans and cardboard boxes…that’s reason enough for me.
Was reading something on the weekend that said that outstanding credit/debit/George & Mary card debt is now over NT$3 trillion in total. New stricter measures are to be put in place when applying for a card. Get this, if you already have 5 cards, you have to provide somekind of financial history to show that you can handle the extra debt. Wish I had a link to the article; flashes of Korea and the whole LG card thing were flashing through my head. As per Ken’s suggestion; start watching the sky when you walk down the street, you never know where they’re going to land! 
Or require anyone with three or more CC to go to a class explaining how long it takes to pay off credit card debt when paying only the minimum monthly amount. That might wake some people up.
Woah! That would be most of the population. Credit card companies have the ideal marketing scheme for locals; apply for a card and get a free whatever worth NT$200. Ask some of your local colleagues how many they have. The average at our place is probably about 4.5. Everytime a new one comes out, they all gush over the free whatever and all apply. The thing I don’t get is where does anyone making less than NT$50k a month, like most of the girls here, get away with having cards with a total limit of upwards of half a million NT? 