(Singing) Money, Money, Money!

Money! There's no way around it, living in Tokyo is expensive!

How do we afford living here? Do we just have tons and tons of money?

[Shakes head no]

The first thing is that we don't actually live in Tokyo.

We can see Tokyo from our house, but we live in Kanagawa, which is right next to Tokyo.

We can get downtown in 20 minutes. It's super close.

But the prices on this side of the river, compared to Tokyo, it drops quite a bit.

And for a big family like us, that's an important issue.

And we don't live too close to the train station, so that really drops our costs of living.

Living far away from the station has its perks as far as that but it's far away from the station!

But there's cheap bicycle parking at the station.

The whole reason we live in Tokyo is because this is right by the church that we are planting,

It's right by the coffee shop. It's where we're working.

It's close to downtown Tokyo which has lots of options for language schools.

Those kinds of things, so this is definitely a convenient place for us to live.

First day of class is done. What do you think?

It was a wonderful class but I have a splitting headache!

Ah! So much to learn!

Another way we save money is that we have a parking spot that comes with this house that we rent.

Which, that's usually a couple hundred bucks a month, just for a parking spot.

About a hundred (bucks)

And the car that we drive, for example... It's old.

We drive a nice car, it's a Toyota Noah, but it's 17 years old!

We bought it used. We didn't pay that much for it, but it's a good car.

It's been really good to us, and we look for areas like those things to save money.

Where are we going? I don't know!

Let's see if somebody else knows.

Rina's house.

The clothes that we buy, we buy decent clothes, but we're not spending a fortune on our clothes.

And this one's 599.

Oh my goodness, and what do we have here?

I got a Super Mario hat!

A Super Mario hat!

OK let's go checkout.

Let's see!

Oh, that's cool Dude!

Are you getting some pretty pictures, Sarah?

Good! Good good good! You look so pretty honey-child.

We found cheap supermarkets.

We go to Gyomu super for most everything.

Also OK supermarket has a lot of cheap prices.

Things that we can't get there we'll go to our local grocery stores like Life or Inageya.

But they're definitely more expensive than the discount grocery stores.

Heading up to the second floor of savings.

Are you excited?

Yes! And cold!

And every now and then, about once a month we do a trip to Costco to get those American items.

The big bulk items — that works out well for our family.

Shopping at those cheap places really helps.

And, one thing that I like to do is meal plan.

Because if I know, ok, this week these are the things I'm going to make for these meals, I will buy just that.

Instead of going into the grocery store and saying...

"Oh, those noodles look interesting, that meat looks interesting! " I just buy it, buy it, and it just stays in my fridge or freezer.

If I know exactly what I'm going to use it for then I only buy those items and it really cuts down on our grocery bill.

A new family favorite is Little House on the Prairie!

The girls have never seen it, and now they are totally into it, right? Love it? Very cool?

We don't go into credit card debt. We use credit cards, because you get lots of points off of them.

And they are very convenient — especially now — you don't want to be touching money.

And so credit card really works nice.

But we have always paid off our balance by the end of the month

So you don't get charged that interest, because the interest on a credit card is just a killer!

And also we get point cards for each store.

Or Rakuten points,

All these points,

And it's amazing, every now and then they'll be like "Would you like to use your points for your purchase?"

And I'll be like "Yes!"

So that saves money.

Japan's obsession with point cards is almost out of control.

But nobody has more point cards than anyone I've ever seen than our good friend Yoshi

Who keeps track of his point cards and always has them ready and available. It's impressive.

Here's what happens in Japan. You live here long enough, and you wallet just fills, just fills with all kinds of cards.

Yeah, these are the cards that I usually use...

And I also have a stack of cards that I hardly ever use but sometimes I need.

Yeah- this is my other stack. Look at those cards!

So what are those Yoshi, they're credit cards, they're what else?

They're credit cards for every single store I go to, you know.

Like Yoshi, I've cleared out my wallet of the ones that I don't usually use

And so these are the ones that I take with me in my wallet because I use them often enough to want them.

But so many times I go to a store and I forgot the point card at home. Man!

Even when we do things like a ski trip that we did early this year,

You can get tollways cheaper, you can get packages for skis and rentals cheaper

There's all kinds of discount packages available, if you have somebody to help you look.

Whew hoo! Oh no!

Oh my goodness! Did you get it?!

Oh yea, I think so. Dude, I saw that ski go flying over and I was like "Oh no!"

But it stuck right there.

And we just bought a tent, so we're hoping to go camping!

Camping is much cheaper than staying in a hotel.

Especially for us since we usually have to get two hotel rooms.

It should be an adventure, let me tell you what. Hopefully it should make for some good videos.

Good job! One step after another.

The big thing when you're talking about finances is that you don't end up spending more than you make.

And that's something that my Dad whose an accountant — he drilled into me at a young age and I'm so thankful for that.

Because if I don't have the money for it, I don't buy it.

And I don't like buying on payments, you know, pay for one year every month or pay for two years every month.

I prefer if I have the money, than just go ahead and buy it. If I don't have the money, then start saving up towards it.

I have a lot of nice studio gear, but that gear has taken us almost 20 years to buy.

We buy as we go, I never bought on payments or installments or anything like that.

Oh! The other big thing is that we send our kids to public school!

So the costs are way less than if it's a private school or an international school.

Or something like that. That's a huge benefit.

When we do day trips or something we try to pack a picnic lunch.

Because it's much cheaper than eating out at a restaurant.

And it saves time too.

So we always try to take snacks and pack water bottles because

We might as well, we all have water bottles and take them with us,

and instead of having to buy at vending machines then we just have it with us in the car.

And when we do eat out, we usually eat out a places that are affordable — they're not super expensive.

Because it's summer vacation!

And then for special occasions like anniversaries or birthdays or different things

You've seen on a lot of these videos, we go out and do something a little nicer, a little more fun.

And that makes those events special, doesn't it?

Yes it does.

So you can afford living in Tokyo if you know what your priorities are

And you're willing to save money in areas that aren't as important to you.

7,144 — the grand total!

Once again thanks for watching, liking and subscribing.

If there's a way that you save money in Japan that we haven't mentioned, write it down below.

We'd like to hear it. We'll see you next time. Bye!

OK I'm going to make eggs...