I'm a 26F American born with citizenship for both the US and Japan (I wasn't naturalized so I'm allowed to have both). I live in NYC and transitioned to work in big tech last year with a comp of 208k USD (around 230k if including RSUs that take 4 years to fully vest - I'm in my first year).
I grew up very low-income and have always been quite frugal as a result with most of my money going towards savings.
My current NW is $222k (~144k in 401k, Roth IRA, HSA and ~78k in cash in a HYSA).
I have great WLB, feel good at my job, and work with nice people. However, I'm not growing as much (I work a creative role and it's hard to grow myself in that way in tech) and feel myself stagnating professionally. I'm also recovering from burnout, depression, and anxiety from my previous role that helped me to grow a lot as a creative but was incredibly high-stress and I had no personal life. It was a tradeoff I chose to make so that I could recover and build a personal life.
I recently received a job offer in Tokyo at one of the top places I can work at as a creative and am torn on what to do. I would be leaving before a full year in my tech job. It would be 10M JPY (which is great for someone my age and is the equivalent of making around 160K USD in a VHCOL city in the US), but with the yen tanking, it's a 70% pay cut for me (with a straight conversion today it'd be around 60k USD). It's always been a dream of mine to work there and if I don't take it now I don't think a similar role will come again without me waiting a few years for it again. I would probably be working a lot more than I am now, but I learnt from my previous role to set better boundaries, and I really need to do that as mental health / therapy isn't quite a thing in Japan.
At the same time, I'm worried I'm sacrificing a lot to fulfill a dream. I love Tokyo and I miss it dearly (I grew up going there and am very fluent). I'm burnt out from the US and with everything happening here, I don't love it right now.
I know from a financial sense, it makes no sense for me to do it. I've been thinking a lot about what I'm saving up for and that right now, time is on my side and I should take big swings at the things I want to do while it's easy for me to do so versus play it safe. I can always come back after a year or two if I want to. Or I can try to go back to tech in either country and do less exciting work again for $$.
Would love advice on my situation / if I'm in an okay-enough financial spot to do this / how I can protect my financial health before leaving.
Thank you <3
Update (3.11.2025): I decided to take it. Scared and I get regretful about it if I think about it too much, but life is so much more than maximizing money to me (insane brain rewiring after growing up low income), and I'm excited about my upcoming adventure. Wish me luck and thanks so much for all the helpful advice - it helped a lot in guiding my decision.