The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and Japan’s The Gold Online introduced the story of Koichi Matsubara, who is in charge of beautification at an apartment complex in Tokyo, Japan on Sunday. He works three days a week, four hours a day for cleaning and simple maintenance work, and is paid around 100,000 yen a month. This is less than one third of the average monthly salary in Tokyo.
However, he owns seven apartments near Tokyo and the metropolitan area, which he makes money on rentals. Add to this stock and fund investments, and the annual income is about 30 million yen.
Nevertheless, he still works as a cleaner. “Cleaning is not for making money. It is for maintaining an active life,” Matsubara said.
“I feel really good every morning when I wake up, clean up, and organize everything neatly,” he said, adding, “I have something to do every day, and I want to keep myself in a state where I can think for myself.”
Matsubara sticks to a frugal lifestyle. She lives in a cheap apartment, refrains from eating out and cooks herself. I haven’t bought new clothes in more than 10 years, smartphones are the basic model, and most transportation uses bicycles.
This frugal lifestyle has been around since childhood. Growing up in a single-parent family, he recalled that he had to save for a long time to buy what he wanted. After graduating from high school, he earned 180,000 yen a month working in a factory and purchased his first one-bedroom apartment with 3 million yen he had collected over the years.
“At the time, the real estate market was in a slump, but he managed it meticulously to prevent vacancy and gradually increased his real estate assets by paying off loans early,” Matsubara said. He is currently planning to receive pensions from the age of 60, based on his nearly 20 years of experience.
Matsubara said, “I always wanted to live within my assets. My goal is to live a faithful life without showing off my wealth.”
SAM KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
