By JOLIE GORCHOV
Staff Reporter
Mauricio Romero has lived in the United States for eight years and never seen the inside of a bank.
Miguel Medina and his wife Norma Roque moved here 20 years ago and use a wide range of financial services from ATMs to 401(k)s.
Why the difference? Income levels clearly play a role, as does language those more fluent in English are more likely to use American banks. Also, people who are here illegally are unlikely to risk exposing themselves by opening a bank account.
No matter what the background and upbringing, Latinos are somewhat less likely to incur debt because of social taboos against owing money.
For the two L.A. families profiled below, the factors that influenced their financial decisions seem to have originated well before they set foot in the United States.
The new way
Miguel Medina and his wife Norma Roque have been fully enmeshed in the American economic system since they first came here. Roque laughs now when she recalls how disappointed her mother was in the early ’80s when she learned her daughter was using credit cards.
“I started getting excited with the credit cards. My mother didn’t like it she still doesn’t have a credit card,” Roque said.
Roque was born in El Salvador 39 years ago and moved to the United States in 1981 with her family to escape the war. Her husband was born in Veracruz, Mexico and moved here in 1979.
The couple lives in a comfortable, two-floor townhouse near Marina del Rey. Medina is a senior account supervisor at P.R. agency Hill & Knowlton, while Roque is a news reporter for KMEX-TV Channel 34. They met 11 years ago when Roque was an intern at another TV station where Medina was working.
Both grew up in solidly middle-class families, learning English at school and surrounded by American influences at home, especially television shows and magazines from the States. Roque’s parents had a dairy business in El Salvador, but did not use credit for anything except the purchase of their home.
“My mother was the business head of the company,” Roque said. “She still preferred to do business in cash. She always said, ‘If you don’t have enough cash to buy things, you don’t have money.’ She still does think like that.” Roque grew up with her own savings account in El Salvador.
Both Medina and Roque spoke fluent English when they arrived in the States. Roque’s father had also worked as an English translator because he liked the language. “He taught us lessons at home in English. We were always around National Geographic and Life magazine,” she said.
Medina’s mother and father were both journalists in Mexico, and he was a professional correspondent himself.
Living in a credit-based economy is not unusual, Medina says, because he grew up in a family that used credit. But in Mexico, credit is mostly for short-term needs. “Credit is something we used for something like vacations, or for things that were more expensive not so long term,” Medina said.
The couple has separate retirement accounts, which are invested in mutual funds. Roque has a personal checking account and a retirement fund, as well as her union pension plan. She shares a joint savings account with her husband. Medina also has a college fund for his 11-year-old son from a former marriage, a 401(k) from his employer and a separate personal checking account.
Medina had to convince his wife to open her own retirement account. “He told me, ‘Look, it’s only so much a month, it’s a good savings for you.’ I was thinking it’s enough with the Social Security and his retirement account,” Roque said. “But we started adding up the numbers, and we realized that by the time we retire, things are going to be different. We want to keep a similar standard of life or better. That’s when you finally have time to travel.”
The old way
Mauricio Romero, 25, works in a printing shop in East Los Angeles, where he gets paid in cash every week.
Romero, in fact, pays all his bills in cash, including rent, gas, phone, electric, and cable. From his two-bedroom apartment in South Los Angeles, Romero takes the bus to all the utility companies to pay the bills. While depending on cash receipts for his record keeping, he says he’s never had a problem with needing proof of paying a bill.
His wife Marisco is 27, and they have two young boys, aged 2 and 3.
Romero moved here eight years ago from Ciudad Guzman in Mexico, a small city about 70 miles south of Guadalajara. The couple met about six years ago when they were working at a candy factory in Los Angeles.
Romero, whose wife no longer works and takes care of their sons full-time, speaks a bare minimum of English and talked about his finances largely through an interpreter during a break from his work. He would not reveal his salary.
Romero comes from a relatively low-income city that only has about 1,500 full-time workers out of a population of 84,000. His family and friends back home never used banks or had a savings account. Romero says it was also hard to get credit. “At home, it’s not easy to get credit or credit cards. Here it is much easier,” he said.
He doesn’t know anyone who has a savings account, either here or back home, and retirement funds are unheard of where he comes from. His father still works as a construction worker in Mexico, and has always been paid in cash. Romero often sends money back home using Money Gram and Western Union services.
Romero says he might prefer checks, but he’s never applied for a checking account or a credit card because he says he doesn’t have a driver’s license or identification to open an account. He wouldn’t say whether he and his wife are legal residents. The few times he has needed to cash a check, he’s been able to use the local liquor store.
Romero doesn’t think credit is necessarily a good thing. And he is not convinced that any of the banking and credit options available to others would make his life much easier. Ultimately, he thinks that a change in lifestyle might be more trouble than it’s worth.
