5 aspects where I’m saving money to invest

Saying “saving” just sounds fancy; anyone who knows me knows that I spend quite “extravagantly”. To excuse my behavior a bit, I follow the philosophy of living well for myself in the present, not waiting until I’m near the end of my life to start enjoying it.

However, I still really want to invest for the future so that if I live too long, I’ll have money to take care of myself and not be a burden on my children.

If you want to have money to invest, the best way is to earn more money. As for saving, you should save on big things that are worth the effort. For necessary things or things that make you happy, you should still buy them. If you love coffee like I do, then keep having 1 cup a day; skipping it won’t save you much. If you love clothes and cosmetics, you should still set a goal to buy 1 item a month. Just don’t overindulge and buy endlessly.

The 5 major areas where I find I can save a lot are rent, phone bills, utility bills, food, and online shopping.

1. Rent
Rent or mortgage payments each month should only be from 20-30% of your salary. I choose to live far from my workplace so that the rent is cheaper and the house is more spacious. Right now, my rent is about 25.33% of our combined salaries.
Because in Japan, public transportation costs to commute to work are paid by the company, if you’re willing to live farther away, you’ll save a lot.

I want to introduce the income and expense tracking app, Money Lover, to you all. This is the only app I’ve used that fully supports English, Japanese, and Vietnamese, and you can choose a currency different from the interface language (I chose Japanese Yen – Vietnamese).

2. Phone bills
In Japan, it’s quite popular to buy the latest phone in installments bundled with a carrier plan. Usually, this type of installment plan has zero interest, but in return, the monthly phone plan is super expensive (¥7,000-¥12,000). Both my husband and I buy secondhand phones or older model new phones and use plans from smaller carriers, so it’s very cheap. We use Rakuten’s 3G plan for ¥968/month and UQ Mobile’s 33G plan for ¥3,278/month. Previously, I used LINEMO’s 10G plan for ¥2,090/month, but because my job requires me to go out a lot, I switched to get more data.
I encourage you not to be afraid of making changes; just switch to whatever suits your lifestyle.

3. Utility bills
Speaking of not being afraid to change, we also changed our electricity plan a few times to get the best deal. Before having kids, we were night owls, so we chose a plan with cheaper rates at night. Back then, we only did laundry, watched movies, and turned on the air conditioner/heater at night. Later, when we had kids, that plan was no longer suitable, so I switched to a more convenient one.
Have you ever heard the advice to unplug electrical appliances when not in use to save electricity and prevent short circuits? Because I’m lazy, I bought smart plugs. Turning them off on the phone app cuts the power, ensuring safety while saving electricity.

Regular type: https://amzn.to/3Q14qWM
Type with power consumption tracking: https://amzn.to/3EmtCEN

I bought an electric kettle [https://amzn.to/42DDgwT] and a hot water dispenser that’s on 24/7 [https://amzn.to/3EhtXZo] because it’s easy to make formula for my baby, and it will save money on both gas and water. When you need hot water, turning on the stove to boil it or turning on the tap and waiting for the hot water uses more gas and water than a water dispenser.
The gas cost to boil 1L of water is from ¥3.36-¥3.7.
The cost of boiling with an electric kettle is ¥1.69. The hot water dispenser costs ¥24.9/day.

There are many types of showerheads and kitchen sink faucets that save a ton of water because they spray with strong pressure but don’t require a large total volume of water. I’m leaving the links here for your reference; you don’t have to buy the exact same type as in my links because every household’s consumption level is different:

Link to buy showerhead: [https://amzn.to/3EllpRd]

Link to buy kitchen sink faucet: [https://amzn.to/3PZZ3qX]

In addition, I also use a bunch of other electricity and gas-saving items that I will share more about later.

4. Food

The best option is to cook your own meals, but I often get lazy and tired of eating the same seasoning style. I’ve calculated it all; even when buying outside food, doing takeout is cheaper than Uber Eats. Or buying bento and rice balls from the supermarket will be cheaper than from a convenience store (combini). (I’ve made quite a few videos about this area).
I usually take the opportunity to buy ingredients or bento in the station’s supermarket to earn reward points 💳❤️‍🔥, and I use reward points very often.

I like to pay with the PayPay app because the supermarket I go to often partners with PayPay to give a lot of extra reward points. I even use my PayPay reward points to invest in stocks right within the PayPay app.

5. Online shopping

I try to go all the way to physical stores to buy directly, to avoid buying the kind of stuff that looks nice at first glance but actually looks awful when tried on.
However, for items that are more beneficial to buy online, I often set a rule for myself to wait 24 hours. The reason is that I often crave buying things in the middle of the night; if I stay strong and don’t click buy, by the next morning I usually completely forget about those items or feel it’s not strictly necessary to buy them anymore. If it’s an expensive item, I wait a full 48 hours.

I like shopping from Amazon because:

1. Super fast delivery; buy in the morning, receive in the afternoon, or buy today, receive tomorrow; if it’s food, it’s delivered in 2 hours.

2. Earn a lot of points; there are tons of point reward campaigns. Spending only ¥500 a month, in a year I saved over ¥86,000:

When traveling, I choose one reliable online booking site and only book on that site. For example, Booking.com gave me a Genius account because I’m a loyal customer. Now I usually get a 15% discount when booking rooms with them. Japanese online sites pay a lot of attention to their “Loyalty Program” – I will benefit a lot if I stay loyal to just 1-2 companies.

That’s a brief overview. If you like the topic of saving in daily life, let me know by leaving a Like and a comment. I will share more experiences on this topic 👋