Chapter Ten: The Truly Rich Don't Need to Prove It
Chen Yichen didn't go look at cars the next day.
He didn't go shopping at luxury boutiques, either.
He didn't even go check on the car that cost more than seventy million, the one he could fully buy after paying just the final installment.
The reason was simple.
He suddenly felt like he'd been spending money these past few days way too much like someone who'd just gotten rich overnight.
If he saw something expensive, he wanted to buy it.
If he saw something even more expensive, everything he'd looked at before suddenly seemed inadequate.
The car costing more than four million? Bought.
The car costing more than fourteen million? Bought.
The car costing more than forty-eight million? Bought.
The car costing more than seventy million? He was getting ready to buy it too.
That pace felt incredible.
But once the rush wore off, he started feeling a little empty.
At eleven in the morning, Chen Yichen sat at home, with the watch worth more than four million dollars sitting on the table.
He wasn't wearing it.
He just didn't feel like putting it on today.
Several car keys lay scattered beside it.
If this had been ten days ago, just seeing these things might have kept him too excited to sleep.
Now they were starting to become ordinary objects.
Even he felt that how quickly he'd adapted was a little strange.
Chen Yichen picked up his phone.
Bank balance:
NT$58,109,462.
Another ten million dollars tonight.
That would be enough to pay off the remaining balance on the car costing more than seventy million.
But for the first time, he wasn't looking forward to midnight.
Instead, he felt like doing something else.
That afternoon, Huang Ziwei from private banking arrived at his home as promised.
Chen Yichen hadn't gone to the branch.
Huang Ziwei had brought a tablet and documents directly to his door.
When the doorbell rang, Chen Yichen was still momentarily stunned.
"Sorry to bother you, Mr. Chen."
Huang Ziwei was dressed in a suit and carried a leather briefcase.
"Come on in."
After entering the living room, he naturally swept his gaze across the entire space.
He didn't make a fuss.
He didn't ask how much the house cost.
He simply sat down and placed the tablet on the table.
"Today, I'd mainly like to understand your needs. I won't keep pushing products on you."
"That's good."
"Your current funds are moving in and out fairly frequently, and the individual amounts aren't small. I'd like to help you get your payments and asset structure organized first."
Chen Yichen nodded.
"That's exactly what I need."
"Do you have any short-term plans for the cash currently in your accounts?"
"Yes."
"What kind of plans?"
"Buying a house and buying cars."
"Anything else?"
Chen Yichen thought for a moment.
"I might buy a plane later."
Huang Ziwei's hand paused for an instant.
It was very brief.
So brief that Chen Yichen might not have noticed if he hadn't become especially good at watching people's reactions lately.
But Huang Ziwei quickly recovered.
"A private jet?"
"Yeah."
"Have you already considered a model, or are you just researching for now?"
"Just looking for now."
"Then what kind of budget are you thinking about?"
This time, it was Chen Yichen's turn to pause.
"I don't know."
Huang Ziwei smiled.
"That's all right. Then I'll start with your usage needs. We usually look at how many people you'll be flying, whether you'll mostly be flying around Asia, and whether you need long-range capability."
Those words gave Chen Yichen a strange feeling.
Before, when he searched for private jets, all he did was look at prices online.
Now someone was sitting in his living room, seriously asking him:
How far are you planning to fly?
In that moment, a private jet seemed to transform from a fantasy into a product for the first time.
"I don't want to connect through another airport every time," Chen Yichen said.
"You'd like to fly directly from Taiwan to the United States as well?"
"Yes."
"Then we'll need to look at long-range models."
Huang Ziwei opened a document.
"Prices at that level are much higher. A new plane could cost anywhere from several hundred million to over a billion NT dollars, or even more."
Chen Yichen wasn't shocked.
He was just doing the math.
A billion.
A hundred days.
If he didn't count any other money, a little over three months.
More than a billion.
Within half a year.
For the first time, he truly felt that the scale at which he'd thought about things in the past had been far too small.
Cars costing tens of millions were indeed just toys to him now.
Huang Ziwei continued:
"However, many private-jet owners don't pay the full amount upfront. They usually combine financing and leasing, and they'll also consider the tax structure and ownership arrangement."
"Why borrow money?"
"It's not because they can't afford to pay," Huang Ziwei said.
"It's because capital has a cost. Clients with a sufficiently large asset base don't necessarily want to tie up all their cash in a single depreciating asset."
That was the first time Chen Yichen felt like he'd been awakened to something.
The way he'd been buying things these past few days was extremely simple.
Pay in full.
Cash.
Pay directly.
Because the feeling was incredible.
No loans.
No approval process.
No need to prove his income.
Whatever money he had, he could just throw it at the purchase.
But Huang Ziwei was talking about an entirely different logic.
"So rich people borrow money too?"
"A lot of them do."
"They have money and still borrow?"
"Being able to borrow and needing to borrow are two different things."
Huang Ziwei smiled.
"For people with large enough assets, low-cost capital is a tool in itself."
Chen Yichen leaned back against the sofa.
He remembered that sentence.
A tool.
In the past, whenever he saw a loan, he thought of debt.
Only now did he realize that once you had enough money, even debt could become a weapon.
"What about the house I'm buying?"
"You mean the one costing more than three hundred million?"
"Yes."
"If you truly have stable assets, you may not need to pay entirely in cash."
Chen Yichen nearly laughed.
Stable assets?
His most stable asset was the ten million dollars that appeared at midnight every day.
Unfortunately, there was no way to turn that into proof of financial strength.
"What if I don't have proof of salary?"
"That isn't necessarily a problem."
"I don't have a company right now, either."
"If your account assets, other investments, real estate, or transaction history are sufficient, the bank can still evaluate your application."
Huang Ziwei looked at him.
"Mr. Chen, for private banking clients, we don't look only at their salary."
That made Chen Yichen laugh despite himself.
When he'd applied for a personal loan in the past, the bank's first question had been about his monthly salary.
Now he didn't even have a job, yet someone was telling him:
Salary isn't important.
The world really was completely different.
The two of them talked for nearly two hours.
Large remittances.
Asset accounts.
Overseas accounts.
Credit-card limits.
Mortgages.
Future cross-border payments.
Possible payment structures for a private jet.
They even touched on insurance and family trusts.
By the end, Chen Yichen finally realized something.
Once you had enough money, the biggest change wasn't that you could buy whatever you wanted.
It was that an entire range of services you'd never even had access to before would begin appearing in your life.
People handled things for you.
People made arrangements for you.
People solved problems for you in advance.
Ordinary people spent money.
Rich people often bought time.
Before Huang Ziwei left, he suddenly said, "By the way, Mr. Chen."
"Yeah?"
"If you're seriously considering buying a private jet, I can arrange for you to speak with an aviation asset consultant."
"There are some in Taiwan?"
"We have partner teams here, as well as overseas."
"Then set it up."
"Okay."
"The sooner, the better."
"No problem."
After the door closed, Chen Yichen stood in the living room.
He suddenly found it a little funny.
Ten days ago.
He'd still been working at an electronics factory.
Now.
Someone was arranging a private-jet consultant for him.
At four that afternoon, the dealership for the car costing more than seventy million called.
"Mr. Chen, would tomorrow be a convenient time to arrange the final payment?"
"Sure."
"Great. Then we expect to have the car ready as soon as the day after tomorrow."
"Mm-hmm."
"Also, because of your purchase history, the company would like to invite you to join the brand's private-owner events."
"Isn't that the track day you mentioned before?"
"That's one of them. There are also overseas events, new-car launches, and private dinners."
At that, Chen Yichen suddenly asked, "Do a lot of rich people go?"
The salesperson chuckled.
"I suppose you could put it that way."
"Sure."
"Then I'll sign you up."
After hanging up, Chen Yichen stood by the window.
He was beginning to realize that the most interesting thing about becoming rich was no longer the products themselves.
It was the doors behind those products.
Buy a car.
Enter a circle of private owners.
Buy a watch.
Become a valued customer.
Buy a luxury mansion.
Real estate agents start sending you off-market listings.
Have a large enough asset base.
The bank sends someone directly to your home.
These entry points had been completely invisible to him before.
That evening, Xu Mingjie texted him a reminder:
"Don't forget Friday. Eight o'clock."
Chen Yichen replied with a simple "Okay."
He hadn't been paying much attention to this gathering.
But after talking with Huang Ziwei today, he suddenly felt a little curious.
Not because he wanted to show off his wealth.
He wanted to see.
How did the people who had been born into a world of wealth live, anyway?
A little after seven that evening, Zhang Jiahao asked him again if he wanted to grab dinner.
This time, Chen Yichen simply told him to come over.
The two of them ordered a tableful of delivery food.
After Zhang Jiahao entered, he looked at the several elegant meal boxes on the table.
"Even when you eat at home, you have to eat this kind of stuff now?"
"I didn't feel like going out."
"How much did all this cost?"
"I don't know."
Zhang Jiahao immediately looked at him.
"You used to love asking how much things cost."
Chen Yichen opened a meal box.
"Even if I ask now, I'm not going to stop eating it."
Zhang Jiahao sat down.
After a while, he suddenly said, "You've changed faster than I imagined."
"What do you mean?"
"You really are starting to look like a rich guy."
Chen Yichen laughed.
"How do I look like one?"
"You don't know the prices of things."
"No way."
"You didn't know just now."
"I just didn't check."
"You used to notice when delivery charged you an extra thirty bucks."
That made Chen Yichen laugh.
It was true.
When ordering from the same restaurant on a delivery platform, he used to compare even a fifty-dollar difference.
Now he genuinely couldn't be bothered to open the order and check how much the whole meal had cost.
Zhang Jiahao took a bite.
"So, did you buy that car costing more than seventy million?"
"I'll finish paying for it tomorrow."
"You're seriously not worried about running out of money?"
"Of course I am."
"You don't look worried."
"I'm just not worried about that anymore."
"Then what are you worried about?"
Chen Yichen picked up his water.
"I'm worried it'll stop one day."
Zhang Jiahao immediately stopped eating.
That again.
"What exactly is going to stop?"
Chen Yichen looked at him for several seconds.
"You really want to know?"
"Obviously."
"If I tell you now, you'll definitely think I'm bullshitting you."
"Then tell me first."
Chen Yichen almost said it again.
But in the end, he still shook his head.
"Wait a little longer."
"You're such a pain in the ass."
"Soon."
"How much longer?"
"About twenty days."
"Want me to count it down for you every day?"
"Sure."
Zhang Jiahao cursed at him a few times.
But they were both laughing.
At 11:50 p.m., Zhang Jiahao left.
Chen Yichen sat alone in the living room.
He hadn't bought a single expensive thing today.
For the first time in days.
And yet he didn't feel like anything was missing.
Instead, he felt more grounded than he had a few days ago.
He was beginning to understand that true financial freedom might not mean spending millions every day.
It might mean that even if you bought nothing today, you wouldn't feel like you'd wasted the day.
Because you didn't need to rush.
Those things would still be there tomorrow.
They'd still be there the day after.
Even if someone else bought them, something better would come along.
Time was on his side.
11:59.
His phone sat on the table.
Midnight.
It vibrated.
Chen Yichen picked it up.
General Deposit: NT$10,000,000.
Latest Balance:
NT$68,003,714.
Sixty-eight million.
That was enough to cover the final payment.
The NT$76.8 million car would officially belong entirely to him tomorrow.
But as he looked at the bank notification, he wasn't thinking about the car.
He was thinking about what Huang Ziwei had said that afternoon.
"Clients with a sufficiently large asset base don't necessarily tie up all their cash in a single thing."
Chen Yichen closed the app.
For the first time, he felt that he couldn't just learn how to spend money.
He wanted to learn how to use it, too.
How did the people who had always stood at the top of this world actually use money—
instead of merely using it to prove they were rich?