The Medium-Small Business Association Saving Plan
For self-employed or small business owners This post is for self-employed or small business owners who find themselves paying a lot in income tax and local inhabitant taxes. I am not an expert in this matter and may have missed important points in this post, so please consult your tax advisor and do your own […]
Portfolio Questions
Can you answer them? The always readable and thought-provoking Ben Carlson wrote a great post full of questions last month. I’ve been considering them ever since, and thought about answering them here on the blog. Unfortunately once I started doing so I found a lot of them were too technical and my answers weren’t particularly […]
Fixed Costs vs. Variable Costs
This is real Matrix-style stuff right here For a business owner, understanding fixed costs and variable costs is essential. It’s also pretty important for people looking to dominate their spending. A fixed cost is one that you can’t change month to month. For a business, that is things like rent or salaries for full-time staff. […]
Backpaying Kokumin Nenkin
Do the math After writing the post about my annual nenkin update, I was reminded that I was not fully paid up and thought it would be a good chance to do some digging and maybe get some blog post fodder. I found out that it is possible to backpay kokumin nenkin up to five […]
The RetireJapan Guide to iDeCo
Looks much better now Wordle of the full content of the GuideI mentioned The RetireJapan Guide to iDeCo in a blog post a couple of weeks ago. Since then a few people bought a copy (thank you!), and some of them very kindly sent me feedback. After making some corrections and adding a section, I paid someone […]
Pension Insurance
Somewhat redundant, like hot lava I got a pamphlet from an insurance company in my mailbox at work yesterday. The content was surprising, so I thought it would make a good post. Enjoy! In Japan, investing in the stock market has a terrible reputation. It is popularly seen as complex and dangerous, and many people […]
RetireJapan on the Road
Surprisingly fun ;) Meal after the talk I was down in Kyushu on Saturday to give a talk to Kitakyushu JALT. A bunch of RetireJapan members came out too and we had a great event. This was something like the tenth RetireJapan event, and I think we have the content down now. The first hour […]
Tax Status in Japan
Clear as mud A couple of weeks ago we ran a post on the new inheritance tax rules. In that post I was not clear about the tax rules in Japan (in my defense, they are pretty convoluted and it seems few people understand and communicate them well).Based on some excellent comments and feedback from […]
Building a House in Japan 5
It’s the final countdown Well, we got our final quote from Ichijo Komuten. (you can see the previous installments of our house-building adventure here: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4) We went into their new showroom in Sendai and had another long-winded presentation about their technology (my mother-in-law came with us, which […]
Reader Profile: Parker Dupont
Lessons from the Future Another real treat for you today: the experiences of someone who went through the system in Japan and then successfully retired. Take it away, Parker! Early Retirement: Lessons from an Unsophisticated Investorby Parker Dupont I retired at 61, just shy of the 62nd birthday required to start my pension. I could […]