RetireJapan

My Japanese wife and I are thinking about a return to Japan in the near future. Part of the planning process is trying to figure out exactly what our expenses will look like before committing to an international move and retirement. We know we will have to pay Kokumin Nenkin until we turn 60.

We used the calculator at http://www.kokuho-keisan.com/ to determine what our Kokumin Kenko Hoken payments will look like as well for the city we plan to live in. It appears that family size may play a role in that calculation. Since we plan to live with her parents and brother in the same house, would we be making those payments as a family of two (my wife and myself) or would we doing that as a family of five? Of the five people in the house only my brother-in-law would be working as the move to Japan will be retirement for me unless my company allows me to continue remotely working from Japan but in that case we'd most likely get our own place while I am still working.

Pointers to any information in English or Japanese would be very much appreciated.

Cheers

Hmm...I'm not too familiar with the hoken amounts, but I believe household here is the key factor.

Will you and your wife have your own household with you or her at the head of it? This would mean none of the relatives would be your dependents.

Alternatively, would it be on one big family household. If so, then I'd imagine the single earner (your brother-in-law) would be the setai-nushi / head of household.

Both of these scenarios would look very different from both a financial / insurance perspective. While you and your wife won't be working, you will probably be declaring income from investment returns, so will be submitting annual tax returns, etc, which would again impact the household / if you are in scenario 2 above.

I don't have a clear scenario for you, but I'd recommend to look into the different configurations of families as they are allowed and see which gives the best options. Scenarios which could end up costing more in terms of insurance premiums could have benefits from a tax / caregiver perspective.

Thanks for the reply. You make a good point that if we go the two person household route we may pay more in insurance premiums but potentially benefit from a tax/caregiver perspective. A good reminder to look at the total cost / big picture and not focus one specific cost. It'd be like buy a very cheap car that requires a lot of costly maintenance vs buying a slightly more expensive car with little to no maintenance costs.