The financial fears second-gen Canadians can't shake

Louisa Eunice
Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:56:53 +0000
Scarcity-mindset, Immigrant-experience, Family-finances, Secondgen-canadians

For Arjun Patel, the sound of financial security is the metallic clink of a heavy rice tin being dragged across a laminate counter. While his peers were probably learning about the mechanics of an RRSP, Arjun grew up watching his parents peel apart damp $20 bills tucked into such a tin for a rainy day that never seemed to end.

“My mother was incredibly frugal, even when we finally had enough,” Arjun says, remembering humid summers in their Scarborough bungalow where the only breeze came from a rattling floor fan. In his household, cash was the only truth.

He learned the rule of the rice tin early: if you can’t touch it, it isn’t real; if it’s in a bank, it’s out of your hands.

Now 34, Arjun is a senior software developer in Toronto, a role that by 2026 standards should signal "arrival." To his father, who earned $14 an hour for 30 years at a plastic plant in Brampton, Ont., Arjun’s income sounds like the end of all worry. But to Arjun, it still feels precarious. He has the glass-walled condo overlooking the Toronto skyline, the six-figure salary, and his mother's voice in his head every time he thinks about spending it.

Even after his first sizable bonus, Arjun froze in a dealership parking lot. He wanted to buy a Toyota RAV4, a symbol that he’d finally made it. But in that moment, the 'fear tax' kicked in, and his salary felt less like a reward than a liability – money earmarked for a disaster that hadn't arrived yet.

​The defensive crouch

For many second-generation Canadians, a brokerage account is a psychological battlefield. These are the children who grew up as the family translators, squinting at T4 tax forms on the kitchen table while their friends got to play video games. They memorized the price of eggs at four different grocery stores because a 10-cent difference felt like a moral failing. Basically, they inherited a defensive crouch.

Shalini Dharna, a registered financial advisor in Mississauga, Ont., identifies this as the invisible weight of the newcomer experience. Most arrivals cross the border with more than luggage; – their financial baggage travels with them, too.

"For many of my clients, a bank balance isn't a tool for growth; it’s a scoreboard for survival," says Dharna. "When you come from a legacy of economic instability, 'safe' doesn't mean a diversified portfolio. It means something you can see, touch, and grab if you have to leave in a hurry. You aren't just investing your money. You’re trying to outrun a history of loss."

These are the children who grew up as the family translators, squinting at T4 tax forms on the kitchen table while their friends got to play video games.

That story, Dharna says, tends to be shaped by economic instability or sudden currency collapses, and it prioritizes a scarcity mindset. The goal is to protect what's already been earned, and growing it is a secondary concern (if it registers at all). This mindset fosters a profound distrust of intangible assets, leading families to cling to the safety of liquid cash or the physical reality of real estate, even when that perceived safety comes at the cost of long-term wealth building.

​Cash as armour

Jennifer Chen knows this first-hand. A 29-year-old freelance graphic designer living in Montreal, she grew up in Richmond Hill, Ont. Her parents fled the fallout of the 1997 Asian financial crisis in Hong Kong, arriving in Canada with a frantic need for stability. Her father, who had owned a small textile business, became a delivery driver; her mother began working in a garment factory.

“In our pantry, bundles of cash were hidden behind all sorts of containers,” Jennifer says. “My parents saw a world where banks could vanish overnight, taking decades of double shifts with them.”

For the Chens, a market dip isn't the real fear. It's whether the structures holding the money can be trusted at all. This is the heart of the fear tax: the psychological premium paid for the peace of mind that only physical cash can provide, even as inflation quietly erodes it.

​The tangibility trap

When money is actually allowed to leave the rice tin, it often flows into bricks – that is to say, real estate. Whether it’s a bungalow in Scarborough or a condo in Surrey, property symbolizes a stake in the earth that a market crash can’t erase. You can hold a brick; you can’t even touch an ETF.

This isn’t just an immigrant quirk, but a documented psychological phenomenon among humans. A 2022 study co-authored by a York University professor identified a tangibility bias, the tendency to perceive physical assets (like real estate or gold) as safer than intangible investments (like stocks), even when data suggests the physical asset is less liquid or more prone to localized risk. For children of immigrants who grew up watching their parents lose faith in financial systems, that tendency has been reinforced their entire lives.

A house, even if its value doesn't grow, has a front door you can lock. For families who have lost everything, that lock is worth more than any spreadsheet.

For people like Arjun and Jennifer, a 2% dip in a portfolio feels like a catastrophe. A house, even if its value doesn't grow, has a front door you can lock. For families who have lost everything, that lock is worth more than any spreadsheet.

This fundamental need for a defensible asset often dictates how the second generation structures their entire lives. Data from Statistics Canada shows that second-generation Canadians are more likely to live with a parent than their third-generation peers, a pattern that has only grown more pronounced. By 2021, 35% of young adults aged 20 to 34 lived with at least one parent nationally, climbing to nearly 47% in immigrant-dense cities like Toronto, where financial security has become a family endeavour. By staying in the family home well into their thirties, many are choosing to funnel their high salaries into a collective mortgage, rather than venturing into the volatility of the rental or stock markets alone.

In this context, staying close to family often serves as both a cultural preference and a financial strategy. Pooling resources into a shared mortgage is a form of risk management.

​The midnight call

For immigrant families, sending money home is more than a discretionary expense; it's a non-negotiable debt of honour. The fear of a midnight call – a medical emergency in Mumbai, a roof collapse in Guangzhou – can keep the bulk of their savings in low-interest accounts, where inflation steadily damages the very wealth they're trying to protect.

Jackie Porter, a certified financial planner in Mississauga, Ont., confirms this, describing the hesitation to invest as the paralysis of just-in-case money.

"I see high-earning professionals who are essentially 'low-investors' because they are mentally bracing for a catastrophe that may never happen," says Porter. "They feel that money can’t be both liquid and growing at the same time, so they choose the security of the bank account over the potential of the market. It’s a protection mechanism that, ironically, often leaves them more vulnerable to the long-term erosion of inflation."

While keeping large sums of liquid cash feels like a security blanket, she says that it often becomes a trap. The goal is to shift that just-in-case energy into a strategic plan, allowing capital to work as hard as the people who earned it.

​Redefining the rice tin

For Arjun, the shift happened when he stopped viewing modern accounts as a betrayal of his parents' struggle and saw them as more efficient versions of that rice tin. He realized that a TFSA was a container that allowed his emergency fund to grow while remaining liquid enough to wire back to Gujarat at a moment’s notice. It provided the growth he needed without sacrificing the immediate accessibility his parents demanded.

Jennifer found her middle ground through an FHSA. For her, the tangibility bias was too strong to ignore; she needed to own a home. The FHSA acted as a bridge, combining the tax-deductibility of an RRSP with the tax-free growth of a TFSA, essentially channelling the frugality she grew up with into a structured path to homeownership.

No top-ten tips or golden rules will help you with your money struggles unless you confront what is causing them in the first place, be it trauma, human behaviour, or an unjust social system.

For those who can't yet afford a million-dollar mortgage but still feel the pull toward property, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) can provide an alternative. They're a way to own a stake in physical buildings through a brokerage account, without the illiquidity (or the stress) of an actual deed.

The Canadian system also has a built-in answer to allay at least some of the fear that drove the rice tin in the first place. The Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation protects deposits up to $100,000 per category, the kind of guarantee that didn't exist in the financial systems Jennifer's parents fled.

The harder work is internal. Jessica Moorhouse, a financial therapist and author of Everything but Money, puts it plainly: “No number of top-ten tips or golden rules will help you with your money struggles unless you confront what is causing them in the first place, be it trauma, human behaviour, or an unjust social system.”

There's a specific kind of vertigo that hits when you realize you’ve made more in a single year than your parents earned in their first decade in Canada. For children of immigrants, a bank balance carries the weight of every double shift and deferred dream that got them here.

For Arjun, Jennifer, and millions of second-generation Canadians, the hardest part is giving themselves permission to invest, to expand what 'protection' means beyond the rice tin, and to trust that growing their wealth honours the people who built the foundation for it. Their parents used the rice tin to survive the immediate present, but the next generation is using investment accounts to claim their futures. For the first time in their families' histories, they’re allowing their money to start working as hard as the people who’ve earned it.