Been pondering a lot recently on what my future will look like. Have a decent job atm, great work-life balance, alright pay. Married with a kid. In my mid 30s.
But lately I’ve been worrying…what if shit hit the fan and I lost my job for some reason in my late 40s/50s? What on earth would I do? What would YOU do?
There have been numerous horror stories of people stuck in shite jobs, without prospects (typically in their late 20s to 30s), and yet it seems like in your 50s it’s just as hard to find a new employer regardless of experience.
Anyone planning for future unknowns? Got any backup plans? Alternative jobs / income sources planned out? A plot picked out in Yoyogi Park?
19 comments
I started investing in the stock market (index funds) when I was a teenager in the US. I invested all of my spare money, not wasting it on things like new cars, unneeded clothes, hand bags, jewelry etc. I managed to retire when I was 52 a few years ago, and now I enjoy my days playing Xbox and planning my next travel. I don’t have kids which are certainly very very expensive, but if I did have kids it would give me even more incentive to invest for the future.
Granted having kids complicated things a lot. But I put away a sizeable chunk of my income, so that if things go South I can move back to my home country, where the same amount of money can stretch a lot more compared to Japan.
Head to r/japanfinance
Also, check out NISA, it’s a government type investment thingy which is non-taxable for a few years. There’s a wiki on the subreddit I linked above giving a lot more details than my description.
I started not so long ago but I already see the positive results, it’s great.
Haha, i got the same profile as you. If I lose my job i leave, plain and simple. Hell I might even kms, no way I wanna deal with the job search bullshit and low pay and power harassment etc. I’ve lived most of what I wanted to live, I can go.
As far as work goes, try and maintain a skillset which gives you a profile beyond your immediate resume, ideally something not Japan-specific which might give you a chance of e.g. working remotely for a non-Japanese employer, and/or developing a “side hustle” which will give you some fallback.
Other than that, try and save/invest, avoid debt not secured by saleable assets, and buy things which are value for money (quality to last, rather than cheap). Personally I’ve always lived with the assumption that income might dry up at any time, and have enough fallback that I can cruise for a whole while if the proverbial hits the spinning air circulation thingy.
Pretty hard to lose your job in Japan as a seishain. So the plan is basically step 1: get a good job. Which I’ve done, so plan completed.
I’m done in the sense if my firm asks me to leave tomorrow I never have to work again.
As I had the same concern as you. What I did was to pay off mortgage in around 13 years. Kids didn’t have appetite for a foreign education so whilst they’ve gone through Japanese private schools, by my mid 40s I knew I could drop to low paid work and stay here.
So whilst saving and investing is good, having a low cost base will do more to help you stay here.
Just to correct this statement.
> it seems like in your 50s it’s just as hard to find a new employer regardless of experience.
It’s harder. Much much harder. This is a dirty little secret Tokyo based foreigners don’t talk about above a whisper. Each year a number of older foreigners delete LinkedIn and disappear back home to get some kind of work.
any domestic backup plan of a coffee shop or owning your own English school or even being an English requires a low cost base.
Yoyogi? Look at mr fancy pants here.
I’ve got PR and decent savings. And try to have a decent circle of friends and neighbours. I think that’s all you can really do.
If you are scared of losing your job, you are probably not job hopping as often as you could.
My guess is that you just get a better job.
I got a occupational license. If I lose a job, it’s easy to find another. Downside is I get binded domestically.
Don’t forget to get a life insurance in case anything happen to you for your family.
If you have a good work-life balance, you could try to start something of your own in your free time.
The world is a vampire and I have all but given up on ever owning a home or having a family. I’m in my late 30s and have worked solidly for the last 15 years. I barely break even each month and haven’t saved a dime since I was on JET in the mid 2000s (those savings are long gone). I’m not an idiot with my money and have no expensive vices. Some people get lucky early in life, and others never do. I’m a seishain now so not likely to lose my job suddenly but I definitely don’t have the luxury of any future proofing. Jealous of those who do.
I started worrying about this in 2016, so I researched pensions and stuff and found that most expat-pensions are a scam. Instead I opened a NISA account and started investing in a cheap index fund once a month. I started small, like 20,000 a month, but steadily increased once I saw how much my savings were increasing.
Unless some catastrophe happens, I’m pretty sure that I’ll personally have a million dollars invested by my early 50s.
My advice is not to let doomers who don’t know anything about how money works tell you that you will never be able to retire.
I’m an English teacher. Sure, basic salaries are low, but nothing is stopping you from doing overtime or finding a second job.
I arrived this year on JET and I really want to stay after my tenure, but I’m not really sure about my options. I could work at a Eikaiwa for far below living wage I guess.
I have a degree in radio and TV broadcast and production but I can’t see myself being able to find a job in that here.
Also quite worried to even go back to Canada because it feels impossible to live there with current wages and cost of living.
I’m in the same boat, but without kids or a partner. It seems like the three common responses are:
* retire early (hah good luck unless you’re hugely successful on money)
* move home (hah good luck if home has employment opportunities for you and isn’t a eugenic shithole with hostile health insurance policies)
* acquire new skills (hah good luck with that when you’re at max capacity just surviving as it is)
In my case I guess I’ll just become homeless then die from lack of medical care unless some cronyistic opportunity comes up with the right timing. Which, let’s face it, the only two ways to get solid jobs these days is either through cronyism or workaholic overachievement.
I dont know you speaking this situation in Japan specifically or not
as I know employees are strictly protected (assume you are sheishain) by working culture
So may be you are worrying about your companys future ?
Network.
When I got laid off due to COVID-19 right after training up our replacements in the India office, I started work about a month later because I contacted people in my old old company at a new company.
In hindsight, I should probably have jumped ship years ago, but then again, the severance helped a lot.
Probably best to maintain that new years card list too. Because my old manager coincidentally got in touch around that time too with an offer.
Disclaimer: I’m crap at networking, but the names always go into my Black Book.