Freelance - Health Insurance + Pension costs?

Hello all,

My wife is a Japanese national who has never worked in Japan, having left when she was 18.
We are now considering settling down in Japan, in a place where we have work opportunities, but no fixed job offer, meaning we will both fall in the "freelance" category, or rather "kojin jigyo nushi"

We're trying to set up a budget to see if this can work out, but stumbling on the compulsary Health Insruance + National Pension plan monthly payments.

We understand that National Pension amount depends on location+salary, and that we can ask to opt out if we are under a certain revenue, but on average, what should we roughly expect to have to pay every month?

Based on basic amounts found online, is it 1.6K JPY x2 for both, so approximately 66,000 JPY per month, regardless of our income?

This is important as what we are planning on doing will take a little time.

We also intend to work some months abroad, so we're trying to estimate the passive amount we have to take into account in this case (rent+monthly payments).

Thanks in advance for your help

Ben

National pension contribution is around 16,000 yen per person per month, that is correct. But national health insurance contribution is based on income, and for example there is one table showing it:

https://www.city.matsudo.chiba.jp/kurashi/hoken_nenkin/kokuho/ryounosa...

Since you will not be a "salaried worker," you'd use the table on the left. From the left column, it is "total income for the past year," "base amount for calculation," "annual health insurance payments (for those aged 40 - 64)" and "annual health insurance payments (below 40)." Note that this is for a single-person household, and there is a bit of a calculation for households with more than one person (let your Japanese spouse see the calculation formula below the table). There will be a waiver/reduction if your income is very low. But generally speaking national health insurance contribution IS quite high.

Thanks AK, this is very helpful.
I read Japanese as well, so we're both on it, as we're both pretty hopeless with this kind of stuff.

Not quite sure how things will be calculated when you first enter the system. Is it calculated retroactively based on the first year's earnings in Japan, or is there some kind of estimation of expected income?

We were working in Indonesia, Mexico and Thailand over the past 5 years so past earnings are not really representative.

thanks again

ben

They calculate the gsalary-basedh portion always based on the previous yearfs income gin Japan,h so the first year you will not be charged any portion that is gsalary-based.h