Financial Planner Test
My new challenge As I kind of hinted at in last month’s blog post, I have decided to take the Financial Planner 3級 test in January. The main reason is that I would like to learn more about personal finance in Japan, and it would be useful for this site if I had some formal […]
Review: How to Own the World
Buy all-world stock ETFs, of course This book blew me away. Not so much because of its advice (it recommends global diversification and a variation of the permanent portfolio) but because it made me change my mind about a couple of things. How to Own the World starts off with two alarming claims: government pension […]
Inflation in Japan
Seems to be a work of fiction Recently inflation has been bothering me. Well, not inflation itself, but rather the official inflation figures. Apparently prices in Japan are dropping again, and are down 0.4% compared to last year. The government has a target to increase inflation to around 2% a year. On a personal level, deflation […]
More NISA Changes
Some good, some bad One of our RetireJapan forum posters spotted this news story: it seems the government is considering making some changes to the NISA accounts. According to the article linked above, people aren’t really using the accounts, but bureaucrats are reluctant to extend the duration as they are worried about losing tax revenue. […]
Review: The Simple Path to Wealth
A lot of the time, simple is best The Simple Path to Wealth is a new book by JL Collins, who writes the excellent blog of the same name. It’s clear, easy to read, well-researched, and interesting. He has a fantastic chapter on investment advisors. It’s pretty much the investing for retirement bible. The only […]
Talking to a Financial Planner in Japan
It was a little bit underwhelming to be honest As part of my research into the Financial Planner test here in Japan, I had a look through the Japan Financial Planner Association website and discovered that they do free consultations in their regional centres (Tokyo, Osaka, Sapporo, Sendai, Nagoya, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, and Kanazawa). Of course I […]
Reader Profile: DC Rise
Planting trees in Nagoya RetireJapan: I’m very happy to present a new reader profile today from DC Rise, an English teacher in Nagoya who attended one of the RetireJapan talks last year. We’ve been keeping in touch by email and he kindly wrote up his profile for the site. Tell us a little bit about […]
Review: The Big Short
Really fun film for money geeks I really enjoyed The Big Short (called ‘Money Shot’ in Japanese -oh myyyy!). It’s not particularly practical (the characters in the film are unusually insightful hedge fund managers, so light years away from your average amateur investor) but it’s engrossing, informative, and enjoyable. Some swearing and a bit of financial […]
Transferring Money Abroad
Could this be the one we’ve been looking for? Anyone wanting to transfer money abroad has run into the expense and hassle of traditional transfer methods. It’s time-consuming. It’s expensive. The exchange rates are terrible. The paperwork is annoying. The people in the bank don’t know how to do the transfer. You forgot to bring […]
Real Estate Prices
The mid-90s want their very useful website back I received a letter from the Ministry of Land, etc. last week asking me to fill in a voluntary survey. Well, I don’t know how voluntary it is, as they said they would call to check if it wasn’t received by the deadline 😉 The interesting/useful thing […]