Sold our home, wondering how to move forward
Upshot: I am wondering what to do with ¥50 million plus a few more years of earnings.
My wife and I are both PR with two Japanese kids. We bought a house in Tokyo on my 52nd birthday in 2021 and my income started cratering immediately as COVID set in. I worked every waking moment, making about 40% of my previous income, just to cover loan payments and utility bills while leaning on my wife to feed, clothe, and educate our kids.
We eventually decided to sell our home in Tokyo and move to Shizuoka, where my wife had found and purchased, entirely from her cash savings, a beautiful house in a mountain hamlet. I then inherited some money from my mother and bought House Number 3 on a neighboring mountain to live in while we renovated and set up House Number 2 as a vacation rental.
It took forever to get a free moment to empty out House 1 in Tokyo to put it on the market, but it did sell and we're clearing about ¥50 million after paying off the loan and capital gains tax.
The wife and I are debating how to go forward. She is focused on developing more rental properties and starting various businesses (and she has absolutely batted 1.000 with her real estate and entrepreneurial moves so far). I have converted my insane working hours to insane commuting hours to continue working in Tokyo through 2028. My salary is garbage but at least now I won't have to devote my entire paycheck to loan repayments.
Our situation is:
- No savings; staying afloat in Tokyo since 2021 cost me everything I had
- No debts after House 1 closes this month
- We are living in House 3, which will get a lot of weekend renovation
- Two old cars (2015 kei car and 2000 truck), running fine, paid off
- Will earn ¥5M to ¥6.5M from my jobs and business income over the next year
- We eat out about four times a year (birthdays) at chain sushi restaurants and never travel or take vacations. It would be nice for the kids to visit their remaining grandparent in Thailand sometime next year.
- Hoping to pay for the kids' university over the next ten years
- House 2 is paying for itself and putting food on the table as a vacation rental; we run it ourselves.
- My wife is 46, kids are 16 and 13.
- We pay into 国民年金 but I have no idea what I'd get if I retired at 60 (three years from now) or 65 or 70
- I would like to stop commuting into Tokyo (other than for one-off jobs), resuscitate my one-man company and work entirely from home within the next few years, until I die or whatever.
Astute readers will discern that I am a financial doofus. I'm sure I've omitted something important from the preceding, but this is too long already. My wife grew up poor and is frugal and shrewd as hell but utterly mistrustful of financial/investment markets, so we have some blind spots where money management is concerned. I am wondering what to do with ¥50 million plus a few more years of earnings.