So I’ve been planning to move and I’m discussing my salary with my manager.
I’d like some help to understand if the estimates I’m making are realistic. I’m a single guy, frugal, who doesn’t mind living in a small apartment, working in the IT field with master degree and 3+ years of experience.
I was thinking about asking something like a 7 million as yearly salary. Using an online taxes calculator, this should give me about 5,8 million as net income. Over 12 months, this goes down to 483,333 yen monthly.
According to some sources online:
* 1room apartments range from 40k to 100k depending on location
* Rooms in shared houses (e.g. oakhouses) are more or less the same
Utilities should be around 10k a month (electricity + gas + water). Another 6k for a phone plan and 4k for wifi.
So, this far I would need to spend a max of 120 k yen on rent and utilities, leaving behind 360k for groceries, transportation(not worried, I work remotely), leisure and savings.
I’m not really sure how to average groceries shopping. I remember bentos and some items in the supermarket being cheap, while vegetables being strangely overpriced. Some websites claim that you can eat comfortably with 1000 yen a meal, but that seems a low estimate. If I bump that up to 2k yen a meal, per 60 meals in a month, it goes to 120k yen (?), which will further detract me to 240k yen for leisure and savings.
Are those numbers reasonable? Am I overlooking something major here?
9 comments
Well, the 40k apartments would be very small and very far out of town. I’d go with the 100k estimates to be on the safe side. Local vegetables are very cheap, you could get them for the whole week for ¥1500 if you cooked everything.
I used to spend ¥12,000 a month on trains and taxis (about 2 or 3 a week) when I was single because I lived in a central location. Taxis home from a nightclub at 6am usually 😄
The bills and utilities sound about right.
Alcohol and meals at restaurants are affordable. So are galleries and museums compared to London and Melbourne.
The only other thing that I would budget for would be holidays and, if you’re single, dates! They can be expensive.
I think you mean million yen instead of man.
7man = 70k yen = $650
> I was thinking about asking something like a 7man as yearly salary. Using an online taxes calculator, this should give me about 5,8 man as net income. Over 12 months, this goes down to 483,333 yen monthly.
Yeah you’re not gonna receive that monthly. Typically, they hold a bit of your salary as a “bonus”, which you’ll receive in the summer and in the winter. A good rule of thumb is to get your salary, divide by 15 and multiple by 0.85. This should give you your take home pay. In the case of 7m, you’d be getting around 396k a month. Then in the winter and in the summer, you’d get an extra 590k give or take.
> 1room apartments range from 40k to 100k depending on location
Since commute is not a problem for you, it won’t really matter where you live. So you can go out of the 23 wards, where prices drop by a bit. Also, I’d go for a 1DK at a minimum. 1R will be very, very small. It’ll be very cramped.
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Utilities should be around 10k a month (electricity + gas + water). Another 6k for a phone plan and 4k for wifi.
This is about right.
> I’m not really sure how to average groceries shopping.
If you cook all your meals, you could do 10-15k yen of groceries a week, so 40-60k a month. As long as you don’t eat anything expensive or exotic.
So counting in the rent, groceries, utilities, you’d be looking at 100 + 20 + 60 (worst case scenario), 180k. Let’s bump it up to 200k for some maneuvering room.
That would leave you with just around 200k a month to do whatever.
Which is way way way more than what you’d need, really. Unless you go out drinking every night, you’re gonna be saving up quite a bit of money.
Yeah that seems reasonable. 7 million is definitely reasonable to live on. Do you not have salary ranges for other employees in your company who are in Japan?
By IT field what do you mean specifically?
If you could get 7 million yen then that’d be a good start, and seems like a reasonable enough number for your experience level, depending on field of course.
If you’re a single guy in Tokyo, then you can live pretty comfortably and save a decent chunk without having to be super frugal.
Since your position is fully remote, it may even be a good idea to live a bit further out, maybe in Kanagawa or Chiba, would definitely reduce living expenses.
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You can research salary levels here various ways to be more confident. Many recruiting companies have free salary guides on their webpages for Japan: Michael Page, Robert Walters, Hays, Robert Half. These tend to run a bit high, as it benefits them to skew it that way. You could try contacting a recruiter here and act like you’re looking for a job to find out if 7M is in line with the market. There are also websites like Daijob or CareerCross that should list similar roles. Also, look for competitors’ career pages and see what salary ranges are listed. Check Indeed.com as it scrapes jobs from all over Japan. Also, Glassdoor for any feedback on your company. More precisely there is a local site similar to Glassdoor called Vorkers / Open Work: https://www.vorkers.com/company_list?field=&pref=&src_str=&sort=2
I think your estimation on utilities is a bit on the low end. Expect 6-8k a month alone for electricity during winter (2-3 months) and Summer (4 months).
Rent for 40k – 100k in central Tokyo, is hard to find if you don’t speak Japanese. It’s simply a fact that you will pay the gaijin tax on rent in Tokyo if you don’t speak Japanese.
If you don’t mind living ~45min – 1h away from central Tokyo, I think you can find something decent around the 80-100k price point.
Unless you’re looking to save a specific (relatively large) amount per month, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble living well on 7MM yen. I wouldn’t say you couldn’t earn more, given your qualifications, but it really depends upon the company. Some can pay more for your qualifications, some cannot. It’s not a ripoff though, IT salaries are generally lower in Japan and you won’t be feeling too poor. Expenses are very high so you won’t be able to go crazy, especially if you have to budget for trips home, guests, and gifts (Japanese people love them, and so does everyone!). But unless we come from very different worlds, you’ll be just fine for a starting salary.