This one isn't coming from an MBA book or from the culture of "Jugaaad" that Indians are known for. This is everything our parents taught us while growing up, about money, budgeting, debts and emergencies.
This is blog 7 in the series of Why I Refuse to Westernise My Indian Home in Canada.
I learnt the word "liquidity" at the age of 23, while doing my MBA. But I knew about the concept of liquidity when my dad bought his first car home when I was 10. Because he discussed with us everything that was involved in his buying decision, and what the market value would be after the new launches in the coming years.
I've been living in Canada long enough now that whenever my partner and I think of any major financial decision, we weigh our options and bank account, and recall everything our parents taught us about handling money. And our interactions with our colleagues and banks only taught us how differently money is moved and planned here.
Canadians are, by many global standards, financially sophisticated. They have TFSAs, RRSPs, and an elaborate credit system. And yet, there is something that gets quietly lost in all that. A certain groundedness around money. A relationship with it that is less transactional and more… ancestral.
Indians carry money wisdom in their habits. It is embedded in routines and in conversations with elders. And lately, I find myself thinking: Maybe, Canadians can learn a few things from Indians about handling money.
Here are five of the ways:
1. Save 20% From Your Paycheck
As a kid, I got some pocket money every month. I saved a portion of it for a few months and spent as little as possible. After a few months, I had a good sum of money that I could use to buy even the then-expensive stuff. This was my first lesson in "savings". Even the small amount saved has the potential to become a sum that could help in emergencies.
Before any of the financial advisor coined the term "emergency fund", indians have been taught to save 20% from their paycheck, every month, without any negotiations. This 20% doesn't go in your retirement fund, insurance or stocks, but is purely cash saved. It is real, accessible, and yours at any point in time.
In Canada, the financial culture often asks people to invest first and save second. The result is that many Canadians are asset-rich and cash-poor. Their money is tied up in their home, their portfolio, their pension. When something breaks, they're reaching for a line of credit.
2. Before You Borrow, Earn The Repayment
This one will take a moment to sit with, because it runs counter to almost everything the North American credit system is built on.
Most Indians do not take a loan until they are confident that they already have, or will soon have, the money to pay it back in full, including the interest. The loan is not a lifeline. It is a formality. A bridge you cross only after you can see the other side.
The logic is: if you need to borrow to afford something, the real question is whether you can afford the debt. Not the thing, the debt. These are not the same question, and confusing them is precisely how people end up losing things they love.
Canadians carry an average household debt that runs deeper than most care to admit. The mortgage-car loan-credit card cycle is practically a rite of passage. And there is nothing wrong with using financial instruments. But there is something worth pausing on in the Indian instinct to calculate backwards from repayment rather than forward from desire.
3. Gold is not Jewellery. It Just Looks Like It.
Ask any Indian woman why she owns gold, and she will likely say: Because I like it. Ask her grandmother, and she will tell you the truth.
Gold in Indian culture has always been a parallel financial system. Bought at weddings, gifted at births, accumulated quietly across a lifetime, it sits on the body as ornament and in the locker as asset. It is universally liquid. No bank account required. No credit score. No questions asked. In a financial emergency, gold can be quietly sold or pledged. Without paperwork spirals, and without involving an institution.
This is a level of financial autonomy that has no real equivalent in Canadian personal finance. The closest thing, perhaps a TFSA or a brokerage account, still requires a bank, a device, a login, and patience. Gold requires none of that. It is simply there.
4. Community Over FinTech Apps
Some Indian communities have a concept of a committee, also known as a chit fund, a kitty, or a rotating savings group.
How does it work? A group of people, neighbours, colleagues, family members, each contributes a fixed amount every month into a common pool. Each month, one person takes the entire pot. The cycle continues until everyone has had their turn. No bank is involved. No interest charged. No credit check.
There is mutual accountability and community trust. You can't drop out midway because others are depending on your contribution. You can't spend the money before it's your turn, because it doesn't exist yet as yours. And when your turn comes, you have access to a sum large enough to actually do something meaningful with it.
In Canada, financial transactions are almost always mediated by institutions. The committee model is promising as your neighbour is, sometimes, the best bank you'll ever find.
5. We Talk About Money Like It's No Big Secret
Especially across generations. In most Indian households, children grow up overhearing conversations about rent, about loans, about whether this purchase is worth it. They are present at the table when financial decisions are being made. By the time they are adults, they already understand that money is finite, that priorities must be chosen, and that silence around finances helps no one.
In Canada, there is a persistent cultural tendency to treat money as a private matter. Almost impolite to discuss directly. Salaries are whispered. Debt is managed quietly. Children are often shielded from financial reality until they're thrust into it at 18 with a student loan and no map.
The Indian approach is messy and sometimes anxiety-inducing. But it produces financially literate adults, not from a textbook, but from lived proximity. Who has seen their parents negotiate, save, sacrifice, and plan? Who understand, in their bones, that money is a tool and not a personality trait.
And as I always say, none of this is to say Indian financial ways are flawless. There is anxiety in it, and sometimes it feels like a financial culture built for scarcity rather than abundance. But with Canada being promising with the money it offers, and my Indian financial wisdom, I feel that anyone can leverage the best of both worlds.