Home base expenses

Japan, SF Bay Area

There are a number of base line costs while traveling and spending long periods outside of our home. In summary these are the largest expenses, and we may be doubling up on some of these in the destination country as well. However, we love our home and will be back so selling/changing residence was not an option. We are lucky to have someone house sit while away, so that covers a large number of headaches including making sure our home hasn’t sprung a leak or burnt down! While finance talk is a bit dull, this might be useful for others looking to do the same thing.

Home Insurance and Property Taxes

Homes aren’t cheap, and neither are property taxes! This is a very predictable expense and the county allows us to pay online. We obviously need home insurance as well, and potential maintenance costs if issues arise while we’re away.

Health Insurance

Spending time outside of the US means we won’t be using health care services for a large part of the year. Health insurance is expensive though, and we would be getting the national health insurance in Japan, so do we need it? Since 2019, the ACA no longer has a federal individual mandate penalty for the uninsured, however California does have a penalty for up to 2.5% of household income. Ouch! Rather than paying hefty penalties, we might as well get a bronze level plan for continuity and making sure we’re enrolled/covered when returning. At least the nice thing about ACA is the ability to always buy insurance and get a general idea of costs. Once we get to Japan, the national health insurance and health care in general will be a fraction of the costs, so it will be interesting to compare.

Update: We found that we can apply for an exemption when living outside of CA to not be penalized. It looks like we may just need to prove we are living abroad come tax time. One other note is that we could be covered by Cobra from the wife’s old company, even though we wouldn’t elect to use it. That may also allow us to be ‘covered’ for the remainder of the year. In any case, we will poke around a bit more on this subject and see if we can save quite a bit of money if we can avoid it.

Notes:

  • Since I am no expert on insurance, this is simply my understanding as we are retiring from our jobs and must self fund our insurance.
  • CoveredCA lists 2021 Bronze PPO plans for $1600 (family of 3).
  • If you keep your income below certain thresholds, there are discounts/subsidies on insurance.

Car Insurance

We will keep one of our cars in our garage, which means we will reduce our car insurance policy to something more minimal while we are away. Continuity in coverage is usually a good thing, and something could happen (eg. stolen/vandalized and acts of god?).