§5 · 49 tips
Where should you keep your savings so that interest, fees and scams don't eat them?
Tips from this section that apply in the United States. This section is about money and spending. It is general information, not financial or investment advice.
What you save is the subscriptions you stopped using long ago but that still charge you every month. Going through the auto-debit lists in Alipay, WeChat, Apple and Android takes less than 20 minutes. By regulation, a merchant must give you a clear reminder before charging you, and must also give you a way to cancel at any time that is easy to find and easy to use.
The old plan you are on is often tens of CNY more expensive than the plans sold now. Tens a month adds up to hundreds of CNY a year thrown away. By regulation, a carrier cannot refuse to let you switch networks without a legitimate reason, cannot drag its feet in handling it, and cannot set up a separate rate plan just for people who switch. If it holds you back, file a complaint.
By regulation, the share of sales that lotto and numbers games must pay out as prizes is at least 50%, and for Double Color Ball (双色球) it is 51%. That means for every 1 CNY you put in, you get back 0.51 CNY on average over the long run, a steady loss of 49%. In 2024, 623,486,000,000 (6234.86亿) CNY of lottery tickets were sold nationwide, and 161,031,000,000 (1610.31亿) CNY of that went straight into the public welfare fund (公益金), which is not part of the prizes.
The regulator's own words are: a return above 6% should raise questions, above 8% is very dangerous, and at 10% or more you should be prepared to lose your entire principal. Legitimate wealth products are no longer allowed to promise a guaranteed principal or return. Money lost in illegal fundraising is, by regulation, borne by you, and no one steps in to cover it when things go wrong.
The minimum payment is a loan with interest charged by the day, about 18% a year, and it voids the interest-free period. An installment advertised as "0.6% fee per month" is about 13.8% a year, not 7.2%. That is because you repay principal every month while the fee keeps being charged on the original amount. To tell which loan costs more, look only at the annualized rate, not the daily rate or the monthly fee rate.
Domestic game players spend about 480 CNY a year each on games on average, and once spent it is basically not recoverable. The law only returns money that minors spent without their parents' consent, and there is no such provision for adults. The least effortful method is to set up defenses ahead of time: turn off password-free payment, set per-payment and daily limits, and unlink your payment methods.
The 6 types of scams use different tricks, but the last step is always the same: getting the child to use a parent's phone to transfer money or read out a verification code. So one sentence is enough to teach: whoever tells you to touch a parent's phone or give out a verification code is a scammer. Add one more: "If you get scammed, tell me first, and I won't scold you." Only if the child dares to speak up the same day is there a chance to get the money back.
Extended warranties are usually sold at 10% to 50% of the original price, and sellers earn more than a dozen times as much on them as on ordinary goods. That difference is what you pay extra. For major parts such as the motor of a washing machine or refrigerator, national rules already require a 3-year warranty. For a very cheap extended warranty, divide its price by the cost of one repair, and the result is how likely it must be that the item breaks at least once in those years for the warranty to pay off.
Beijing tap water comes to 0.005 CNY a liter. Dispenser water at 20 CNY a bottle is about 1 CNY a liter, more than 200 times as much. A family drinking one bottle a week spends a little over 1000 CNY a year, and the same amount of tap water is under 5 CNY. Tap water has to meet a mandatory national standard, and boiling it is normally enough to drink. When water smells bad or looks cloudy, boiling won't clean it, so stop drinking it and report it.
American households that traded most often earned only 11.4% a year, while the whole market earned 17.9% over the same period, and the gap was almost entirely trading costs. In China's surge and crash of 2014 to 2015, the 85% of households with the smallest accounts traded too often. They earned 250,000,000,000 (2500亿) CNY less than if they had simply held, about 30% of their starting capital.
If you borrow to buy stocks and the price falls below the line and you can't put in more money, you are forced to sell. The paper loss turns into a real loss on the spot, with no chance to "wait for it to come back." The regulations say that someone who has had an account for less than half a year, or whose average daily assets over the last 20 trading days are under 500,000 (50万) CNY, cannot open a margin account. That threshold itself shows it is not meant for ordinary people.
The stocks that actively managed funds hold, taken together, are already very close to the whole market. But the extra management fee they charge is taken straight out of the return you end up with. When fund results are compared by repeatedly recalculating them as if they were luck, very few funds earn enough extra to make up for the fees they charge.
For every 1 percentage point higher in the yearly fee rate, you end up with about 18% less after 20 years and about 26% less after 30 years. Picking the lower-fee fund within the same category is the one thing here that you can know for sure in advance.
As long as several things don't all rise and fall together, spreading your money out leaves the average amount you can earn unchanged, while the ups and downs of your account get smaller. Conversely, if all your money is on one stock, one platform or one house, when it has trouble, you have trouble with everything.
In that three-year U.S. dataset, members who chose a contract of 70 USD or more a month went only 4.3 times a month on average, which comes to more than 17 USD a visit. A 10-visit pass costs only 10 USD a visit. Over their membership, these people paid 600 USD more on average. Unless you already have a record of going steadily for a year or more, paying per visit or buying a short term is the better deal.
What you save is the things you would no longer want the next day. For things bought online, you can return them without giving a reason within 7 days counting from the day you receive them. A few kinds can't be returned: made-to-order items you asked for, fresh and perishable goods, digital goods already opened, and newspapers and periodicals.
When people judge whether something is expensive, they rely on the first number they see, and later adjustments are never enough. So "original price 999, now 499" makes you systematically overestimate how cheap it is. And by regulation, the base that a discount is measured against is only the lowest transaction price at that store in the 7 days before the promotion. The crossed-out price may never have actually been charged.
The dividend and return parts are not guaranteed to you by the insurer. The product description must state in bold type: "future policy dividends are non-guaranteed benefits." The extra premium you pay for a return amounts to handing money to the insurer to keep for you, with no guaranteed return, and it isn't easy to take out.
Keep 3 to 6 months of living expenses in a place you can take it out at any time. Then when you lose your job or get sick, you don't have to borrow at 18% a year, and you don't have to sell your investments at a loss. Money in a bank is covered by deposit insurance, up to 500,000 (50万) CNY at the same bank.
Prepaying a mortgage is the same as earning your mortgage rate with certainty. So ask only one thing: is the after-tax return you can get steadily over the long run higher than your mortgage rate? If it is, don't rush to prepay; if it isn't, or you can't tell, prepay. With equal-installment loans, interest makes up more of the payment in the first few years, so the earlier you prepay the more you save. The "prepayment estimate" in your bank's app gives you the number directly.
The price of these things first includes a layer of consumption tax: 20% on watches of 10,000 (1万) CNY or more each, 5% on gold, silver and platinum jewelry and diamonds, and 10% on other jewelry and jade, with value-added tax on top. You don't get this tax back when you resell. If you truly like it, buy it as consumption and don't count it as investing.
Merchants must show the draw rules, the draw probabilities and the number of limited items in a prominent place. They may not manipulate the results behind the scenes, and may not include empty boxes. A pity mechanism (guaranteed result after a number of draws) and caps on spending and number of draws are only encouraged for merchants by the document. For blind boxes bought online, if the merchant explained it clearly and you confirmed it, you can't return the box for no reason within 7 days once it is opened.
People's instinct is to sell when they've made money and to hold on grimly when they've lost. In seven years of records on 10,000 American accounts, stocks that had risen were more than 50% more likely to be sold than stocks that had fallen. The same people were also keener to add to losing stocks. Yet the losing stocks they kept did on average 3.4 percentage points worse over the next year than the ones they sold.
The premiums you pay do not all come back as payouts, because part goes to the insurer's costs and profit. So what's worth buying is cover for losses that rarely happen and that your family couldn't pay for if they did, such as a serious illness, injuring someone while driving, or the death of the family's earner. Small losses your savings can bear are left to the emergency fund.
Term life insurance covers only a fixed number of years, and if the insured person dies in those years, the family receives a lump sum. It is for family members who live on your income, for example when the mortgage isn't paid off and the children are small. If no one depends on you, you don't need it. Children don't earn money, and the law even limits how much a death policy on a child can pay.
Banks may sell insurance on behalf of insurers, but must not describe it as a deposit. The cover of an insurance contract must print "insurance contract" and the insurer's name in large type, and must not carry the words "deposit" or "savings." If the cover shows an insurer, the money is not a deposit, and canceling after the cooling-off period costs you money. People over 65 who buy at a bank can in principle buy only products with a fixed return.
These tips describe mainland-China rules and do not apply in the United States; they are here for people living in China.
These kinds of people can usually get money back: those who worked only a few months in the year, those who changed jobs mid-year, and those who did not fill in deductions such as children's education, mortgage, rent or supporting parents. It takes a dozen minutes or so on your phone. If your comprehensive income for the year is under 120,000 CNY (12万), or the tax you would owe is under 400 CNY, you can skip it.
The housing provident fund is not only for buying a home. The new regulations list 9 situations in which you can withdraw, and renting, renovating the home you live in, and paying property management fees are all included. After you submit an application, the housing provident fund center (公积金中心) must tell you within 3 days whether the withdrawal is approved.
When a child aged 8 or older spends money, if the amount is clearly out of proportion to the child's age and understanding, and the parents neither agree nor accept the charge, the transaction is invalid and you can ask for a refund. A child under 8 cannot decide on spending money alone in the first place. If the parents keep silent, the law treats it as not accepting the charge.
In the second batch of volume-based procurement, prices fell 53% on average, and by as much as 93% for the biggest cut. As of April 2026, 11 batches have been done, covering 490 drugs. When a doctor prescribes or you buy medicine, ask one more question: "Is there a volume-based procurement one, a generic-name one?" The ingredients are the same, and you can spend much less.
Set up the linking once, and the money in your employee medical insurance (职工医保) personal account can be used for your spouse's, parents' and children's care and medicine. If you don't, that money can only be used by you, and it just sits in the account.
For every 1 CNY you put in, the tax you save is "your tax rate minus 3%." Putting in the full 12000 CNY in a year saves 840 CNY at a 10% rate, 2040 CNY at 20% and 3240 CNY at 30%. For someone at only a 3% rate, the tax saved is paid back when withdrawing, so the money is locked up until retirement for nothing. Someone who pays no income tax still pays 3% when withdrawing, a net loss.
A merchant that takes your prepayment must sign a written contract with you that states clearly how to get a refund. If the merchant's business runs into serious trouble, it should stop taking money, and if it is going to close or move it must tell you in advance. At that point you can ask it to keep providing the service, or to refund the unspent balance to you. Merchants who violate these rules are fined.
When you are at fault, compulsory traffic insurance pays at most three items: 180,000 (18万) CNY for death and disability, 18,000 (1.8万) CNY for medical expenses, and 2000 CNY for property damage. The three are counted separately and cannot be moved from one to another. Compensation for injuring someone easily exceeds these limits, and the excess is paid from your own family's pocket, so buy enough commercial third-party liability insurance.
If a merchant cheats you, you can claim three times the price you paid, and a price under 500 CNY is counted as 500 CNY. A platform that knows a seller is infringing and does nothing must pay along with the seller. A deposit can be at most 20% of the contract amount. If you breach, you lose the deposit, and if the seller breaches, it must return double. Fake orders and fake reviews in a live stream carry liability, and big-data price discrimination against existing customers is expressly banned.
When something you bought in a live stream goes wrong, the most common dead end is that you can't find who to sue. At that point you can directly ask the platform for the information of the live room's operator and the host, and the related business records. The platform must provide them.
If you buy expired or spoiled food, the item itself, its packaging and the receipt are your evidence, so don't throw them away in a hurry. You can claim compensation of ten times the price paid or three times your loss, and an amount under 1000 CNY is counted as 1000 CNY. Whether to go after the seller or the manufacturer is your choice, and whichever one you go after must pay first and may not push it onto the other.
In 2024, the state spot-checked 25250 batches of products, and 14.3% failed. E-commerce channels were worse: of 7297 batches checked, 23.5% failed, against 15.1% for physical stores. Before buying a big-ticket item, spend a few minutes checking the spot-check notices, and check whether the 3C certificate (China Compulsory Certification, 3C) is real. Where an energy-efficiency label is required, it must not be missing.
Certificates can be forged, so what you check is the body that issued the certificate. A testing body must be qualified to issue reports to the public, and the report must carry the CMA mark. The issuing authority publishes the list of bodies on its website, and you can check for yourself whether this one is on it. In cases investigated by the authorities, some "national inspection certificates" (国检证书) that came with the goods had been made by someone the seller found.
The law requires an ingredient list only on prepackaged food, not on bulk food. A bulk counter only has to show the name, production date, shelf life and who produced it. So "no additives listed" does not mean "none added," only that the law doesn't require listing them. If you care, buy the prepackaged version, where the ingredient list and additive names are printed on it.
From May 2026, overseas brokers such as Tiger Brokers (老虎), Futu (富途) and Longbridge (长桥) may no longer open accounts for people in mainland China. For accounts already open, for two years they can only sell and move money out, and cannot buy more. The foreign exchange quota also may not be used to buy overseas stocks, and violators cannot use the quota that year or for the 2 years after. To buy overseas assets, go through a QDII fund or Stock Connect to Hong Kong.
Personal insurance of one year or more has a cooling-off period. For policies bought at a bank, it is 15 days after you receive the policy, and canceling in that period costs at most a 10 CNY processing fee. If you cancel after the cooling-off period, you get back only the cash value stated in the policy, often less than you paid. When the insurer calls to ask whether you understood, don't say you understood if you didn't.
Online ads shouting "full refund, no fee unless it succeeds" are mostly illegal agent cancelers. They take 30% to 50% of the refunded money, and also ask for your ID card, bank card and verification codes. Once the policy is canceled, the coverage is gone too. If you feel misled, first go to the insurer's customer service, and if you can't reach agreement call 12378, free of charge throughout.
If no beneficiary is named, or the beneficiary has died first, the insurance payout counts as part of the estate and is first used to pay the debts the deceased owed. If the beneficiary is written as "wife so-and-so" and they later divorced, it counts as none named when the event happens. Family members need to know the policy exists: for life insurance you must claim within 5 years of learning of the event, and for other insurance within 2 years.
China does not recognize virtual currency as money, and a personal trade to buy coins can be ruled invalid, so a loss is yours alone. One person bought Tether from another and paid about 448,000 (44.8万) CNY, then the platform could not process withdrawals, and the lawsuit to get the money back was dismissed by the court. Having coins stolen is a different matter, and the thief is still convicted of theft.
If you have no employer and pay into employee pension insurance yourself, the best approach is to pay at the lowest tier and build up the full number of years. The bulk of what you receive follows the average wage of the place in the year you retire. Converted at that year's wage level, paying at the lowest tier for 15 years and collecting from age 60, you break even after about 10 years of collecting, and the extra paid at higher tiers takes about 17 years of collecting. It is worth paying in, but it is not a sure profit.
If a major component such as the engine or transmission breaks in a new car's first 7 days, you can demand a replacement car or a refund outright. Within the first 60 days or 3000 km, failure of the brakes or steering, a cracked body, an oil leak or a battery fire also qualifies for a replacement or refund. Within the first two years, if the same fault has been repaired many times and still isn't fixed, you can also get a replacement or refund, but you pay a usage compensation fee based on the mileage driven.
If you buy a used car from a dealer and the dealer knowingly hid its real condition, such as an accident or flood damage, you can return the car and also claim compensation of three times the price of the car. But you get the triple compensation only if you can prove the dealer hid it on purpose. If the dealer says it didn't know and the court accepts that, you get only the price back plus interest. Triple compensation does not apply to a car bought from an individual.
If the store says arranging a loan costs an extra “financial service fee,” the rules do not allow dealers to charge it. You can go to another provider or arrange the insurance, loan and plate registration yourself; the store cannot force you to do them with it, and cannot charge anything beyond the listed price. Before taking out a loan, have the other side write down the annualized rate and all the fees, and compare.
