Greater China’s young living paycheck to paycheck

Eric Hsu remembers a time when he was 10 days away from payday and had just $32 left. He had no savings.

“I used the remaining money I had to buy loaves of white bread and I ate that for all three meals until my pay came in,” he told CNBC Make It.

“Sometimes I would think, I am not earning little, I would actually think I’m earning an upper-middle income salary. But I still feel really poor every month.” 

Hsu belongs to a group of people in Taiwan, typically young and single workers, called the “yue guang zu” — the so-called “moonlight clan.”

The term describes being broke at the end of each month, or as Hsu describes it, “Money comes in from my left hand and out from the right.”