It’s Your Fault
All of it. I had an upsetting family incident this week (nothing too serious) but it made me notice something huge. Taking personal responsibility for everything is incredibly powerful. It’s the opposite of blaming fate, other people, or the world for things. At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter why something happened: […]
Investing in Property in Japan
Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me I got this flyer the other day, and it made me curious. Basically it’s an ad for a 4-plex rental apartment in a good area in Sendai. The building is fairly old, currently fully occupied, and the yield when full is only 7.53%. I presume you start […]
Money Geeks
How bad are you? It might surprise you to hear that I am not a hardcore money geek. In fact, I feel a bit inadequate sometimes when talking to real money geeks. Take a look at the Money Geek Scale (TM) below and see where you fall: 0 Financial DisasterHas trouble paying bills each month. […]
J401k for all
Good news everyone! I just found a report that says that from next year public servants (I presume this includes us teaching types) and homemakers will also be able to open J401k accounts, provided they are paying into the national pension scheme. I found partial confirmation here (click through to 公務員) and this blog post claims the […]
Enough
Recently I’ve been turning down good work Last year I stopped doing a well-paid part-time job. Last month I turned down a lucrative side project. Why? I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘enough’. Once you have enough, you don’t need to try and get more. In some ways it is the key concept in personal […]
How Not to Approach Investing
Classic schoolboy error I read this article today, about how the Japanese government pension fund experienced 5 trillion yen “losses” last year. This is not surprising, as the last few months have seen shares fall and the yen rise (my own portfolio is down on paper), but it does show the typical flawed viewpoint of […]
Survey Results
No surprises here Thank you to everyone who answered the survey last week. Unsurprisingly for a personal finance website, 50% of respondents invest in the stock market, 25% use a savings account, and only 25% do not invest. I wonder what those numbers would be like for the general population?
THEO Stats
Pretty much as expected, to be honest I got an email from the THEO guys talking about things on their one month anniversary. It included the graphic above which I found quite interesting. As expected, most of their customers are based in Tokyo or surrounding municipal areas, most are under 40, and most have only […]
Priorities
A post from our sister site I wrote about priorities today on my teaching blog sendaiben. Check it out!
THEO Robo-advisor
It has begun Just got the email notifying me that my account is fully operational. It looks good! We’ll see how it goes over the next few months.