Seven Things
None of them worth a blog post in themselves Had a bunch of things kicking around the blog ideas list, but none of them were really worth their own post, so here they all are. At once. Exciting! 1. The Not-so-new Forum The new Forum is really taking off now, and it’s turning into a […]
The Three Elements of Money Mastery
Take a seat over there, grasshopper There are basically three things you need to become capable at if you want to do well with your personal finances. Earning money. Saving money (not spending it all). Investing money. Being good at one of these and bad at the other two is a recipe for poverty. Just […]
The Ten Rules of Index Card Personal Finance
Of course I am going to rewrite them I read this post on the ESI (Earn, Save, Invest) blog on Friday and really enjoyed it. It mentions the index card personal finance rules. They look like this: 1. Strive to save 10 to 20 percent of your income. 2. Pay your credit card balance in […]
Amazon Kindle Sale
It’s on, not sure how long for Amazon is doing a sale on Kindles for Prime members: it’s 4,000 yen off a Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, or Oasis. Not sure when it will end, so if you are interested recommend checking it out sooner rather than later. I got into ebooks on Kindle a long time […]
UK State Pensions 4
Maybe the end? A long time ago I started looking at the UK state pension. I then had a series of frustrating exchanges with the pension office in the UK. The UK civil service really makes you appreciate the Japanese one 😉 Finally I received a letter yesterday. Almost a year after starting the process, […]
Talking to Kids about Money
The best gift money can’t buy? This came up on Facebook last week: how can we teach children about money and personal finance? ​My family was not really money-savvy growing up. We didn’t talk about money much. It was an age of adequate work pensions and investing was something rich people did. Even though I […]
Prepaying Kokumin Nenkin
Not sure which is the best option The cost of kokumin nenkin paid by bank account withdrawalHere is a prime example of how rich people get all the breaks. If you can afford to prepay your kokumin nenkin, they will give you a discount. The longer you prepay for, the bigger the discount. If you […]
Real Estate Investment Trusts
They’re alREIT with me 🙂 Recently we’ve had some questions about REITs. I am by no means an expert, but can probably stretch to cobbling something together, and then hopefully more knowledgeable people will chime in with comments 😉 A REIT is a real estate investment trust. It’s basically an index fund for real estate. […]
Housing Options in Japan
Which is best for you? Broadly speaking in Japan you can choose to rent or buy, and your can choose a house or a manshon (or apato if you are renting). There are also various minor options, like living in a company dormitory, renting one of the new style maisonette apato, etc. We’ll come back […]
Fuka Nenkin 2
I screwed up We wrote about nenkin kikin and fuka nenkin a couple of months ago. Basically they are two schemes kokumin nenkin payers can use to increase their eventual pension payouts (which will be much lower than kosei nenkin payers’ ones). Payments into both nenkin kikin and fuka nenkin are tax deductible, using the […]