2016 Roundup I (Jan-Apr)

The good stuff from earlier in the year


We’ve been getting quite a few new readers recently, and it’s coming up to the end of the year, so I thought it might be good to run a series of posts looking back over some of the bigger stories here on the blog in 2016.

First of all, I wrote quite a bit about the robo-advisor service THEO. This turned out to be by far the best of the five robo-advisors I ended up trying, so if you are interested in a very easy solutions to investing you might want to brush up on these posts:

  1. Japan Robo-Advisor THEO
  2. Robo-Advisor THEO: Opening an Account
  3. Robo-Advisor THEO
  4. THEO Robo-Advisor
  5. THEO Stats
  6. THEO in the News

And if that isn’t enough THEO for you, I’ll be writing an update soon on how things are going after nine months using the service.

I also wrote about the Japanese pension system:

  1. The Japanese Pension System
  2. Japan Pensions

I wrote about Interactive Brokers, a good option for US citizens and others who are planning to leave Japan in the short- to medium-term:

  1. Interactive Brokers
  2. Review: Interactive Brokers

There was a post on travel hacking, a comparison of the NISA and iDeCo accounts, a post about electricity market liberalization, and a post about RL360, a poisonous product still recommended by ‘advisors’ in Tokyo.

Finally, there were a bunch of posts about concepts in personal finance:

  1. In 20 Years’ Time (thinking about Junior NISA)
  2. Emergency Fund
  3. Five Key Concepts in Personal Finance
  4. Wine and Money
  5. Financial (in)Security
  6. Investing is Different
  7. Making an Investment Plan
  8. Enough
  9. Financial Independence vs. Greed
  10. How Not to Get Rich

We’ll be doing the best of May to August, and September to December on the following two Fridays.

Anything good in there? Which were your favourites?