[Road to 100,000 Yen/Month - Part 4] No more places to cut? The realistic household budget defense strategy of a large family in their 40s using 'Furusato Nozei'

After trimming down insurance, communication costs, and subscriptions with scissors, and despite taking steps forward and backward, the cumulative savings have finally reached '61,800 yen per month.' We are 38,200 yen away from our goal of 100,000 yen.

...However, I faced a major problem here.

'There is simply nowhere left to cut.'

That is exactly when my source of information, YouTube, comes into play. With a desperate feeling, I tapped the screen and found this time's theme: 'Furusato Nozei' (Hometown Tax).

It is a classic method that many people practice, but our family's style is to 'do anything if it leads to reviewing our household budget.' Let's take a moment here to organize the essence of Furusato Nozei.

Furusato Nozei is not 'luxury' but 'expenditure optimization'

There is often an image that 'Furusato Nozei = luxury by receiving high-end meat or fruit,' but the essence is different.


It is an extremely rational system where you 'pre-pay taxes that you would normally have to pay to a municipality of your choice and receive a gift (return gift) in return.'

There are three points to utilizing it as a household budget defense.

1. The actual burden is only 2,000 yen: The amount remaining after subtracting 2,000 yen from the total donated amount is fully deducted (reduced) from the following year's resident tax and income tax.

2. Cut living expenses with return gifts: By choosing 'things you definitely use' such as rice and daily necessities, you can save on monthly shopping costs.

3. Easy application with the One-Stop Exception System: If you donate to 5 municipalities or fewer, the procedure can be completed just by using a smartphone app or by mail without having to file a tax return.

There is only one point to be careful about. Do not exceed the 'limit' calculated from your annual income and family structure.
If you exceed this, it becomes a pure donation, so
checking with a simulator is essential.

・The 'return gifts' chosen by our large family in their 40s

Based on this, our family's policy is: 'Do not aim for luxury items at all. Aim only for daily necessities.'

Our family's limit is about 70,000 yen. We used the 'Satofull' portal site and put everything into tissue paper and toilet paper as our return gifts.

As a father of a large family, what I really want to recommend here is the '5x length toilet paper (single roll)'.

It is true that at first you might think, 'Is it a bit thin and hard?', but it has the benefits of 'overwhelming longevity' and a 'drastic reduction in nameless chores (changing rolls and shopping)' that more than make up for it. I really want to recommend this to every household.

When you combine these to donate up to the 70,000 yen limit, the mechanism is that 68,000 yen will be properly offset in that horizontal notice (Resident Tax Determination Notice) that arrives around June of the following year.

So, how much did we 'save' in the end?

Let's calm down and calculate this here.

The 68,000 yen deducted from resident tax is just the 'prepayment of taxes' coming back, so strictly speaking, it is not a saving.

Then, as for the value of the return gifts received, it is determined by law to be '30% or less of the donation amount'.

70,000 yen (donation amount) × 30% = 21,000 yen (value of return gifts)

21,000 yen ÷ 12 months = approximately 1,750 yen per month

'...Yeah, well. I'm grateful that we got 20,000 yen worth of daily necessities for effectively free, but when converted to monthly savings, it's a surprisingly modest number...!' That was our family's realistic impression...

Nevertheless, it is a fact that our monthly cash flow is definitely improving.

This time's savings effect (monthly conversion): approximately 2,000 yen

Savings to date: 61,800 yen

Current total savings: [63,800 yen]

Only 36,200 yen left to reach the monthly goal of 100,000 yen!

There is no dramatic silver bullet, but this steady accumulation is the royal road to asset building. In search of the next move, our family's journey of household budget review continues.