Hey all, I wouldn't mind some advice.
40M UK person living in Tokyo and working in a non-teaching, boring office job. I have been living in Japan on and off for 12 years and this current stint is now 2 years. I've always enjoyed living here and feel like I meld in pretty well asides from looking very much like I come from a different country. I speak Japanese fluently and have had N1 for about 10 years now.
I last left Japan during the pandemic to work in Calgary and while I was there I really missed life in Japan, so after a while I made plans and moved back. I have experience in IT and thought I would come back to a tech job but when I was looking for a visa sponsor I got a regular salary-man job. This has come back to haunt me a bit as although the work is fine (but boring) I'm stuck at 4 million and can't seem to land a job with IT because hey keep on mentioning my "gap" from working in an unrelated industry in Japan after leaving Canada (hindsight being 20/20 I should have tried harder to get a job with an IT company that would sponsor me; although it stings to be penalised for not abandoning the job that got my my first visa. Lessons learned I suppose).
So currently I'm employed and life is fine. Obviously more money would be great, but I can get by. The thing is, I am originally from the UK and have a chunk of money set aside for maybe buying a house. I have toyed with the idea of staying in Japan and buying here, but again uncertainty about the economy and the current Japan style of hostile environment is starting to make me unsure. I feel like staying here would be fine for the present but I would be setting myself up for failure in the future. I also find it difficult to imagine retiring or growing old in Japan.
Moving back to the UK, I come from a fairly low-income area so buying a house won't be too much of an issue, even as a single income person. I also checked the exchange rate and was horrified to see my current salary and tax out goings compared to if I was making something like 30k in the UK. One thing about the UK is I haven't lived there for about 25 years so I have very little idea of what I'd be going back to.
Another thing is pensions. I contribute to the Japanese pension and also do voluntary contributions to my UK pension. However, after this I feel like I have absolutely no wiggle room for additional savings or investments like NISA. Maybe the grass is just greener on the other side, but moving back to the UK would maybe give me more flexibility to set up for retirement? A few years ago I would have said that the cost of living here is so affordable it's a non-issue, but with things increasing the way they are and my salary staying very much the same it's becoming hard to stay anything positive about the cost of living.
Anyway, I have no idea what to do. Ignoring everything and carrying on would probably get me another 10 years before I really started to panic, but I feel like starting a new decade of my life is a good point to take stock and make some decisions. So, wise people of Reddit, any idea on what I should do?
by Alternative-Gene2999