A Few Milestones
I’m really pleased Some things I used to enjoy This is an anniversary post, in some ways. RetireJapan has been around since December 2013, so it is just over three and a half years old. This is the 333rd blog post! We have over 500 people receiving the weekly emails (thanks, everyone!) and 600 people […]
Japan Pension Update 2017
Very informative for the first time My pension update (年金定期便) arrived this week. It’s sent out once a year, around your birthday. This is the first update I have received since the law was changed to allow us to vest in ten years instead of twenty-five. Accordingly, it now shows how much pension I would […]
THEO upgrades
Even more beginner-friendly We talked about changes to THEO recently. You can see all the THEO posts so far here. So what’s new? Well, the minimum deposit to open an account has been lowered from 100,000 yen to 10,000 yen. That means that opening a THEO account is now easier than ever. The other development […]
Tax Residence and Inheritance Tax
Oh, my. The section dealing with inheritance tax reform (linked document also talks about the new NISA and changes to dependents, etc.)Back in April we mentioned the changes to inheritance tax laws in passing. Since then people have brought it up a few times on Facebook and in conversation, so I think it’s worth looking […]
Relative vs Absolute Price
It’s an important distinction I saw this article the other day, about the Beckhams building a swimming pool or some such nonsense in their ‘6 million pound house’. Then I realised that 6 million is a fraction of their yearly income. For them to build a 6-million pound house is kind of like for me […]
MUFJ “robo-advisor” funds
Not sure they can really be called robo-advisor A reader (K) got in touch last week and asked me about Mitsubishi UFJ’s new robo-advisor service Portstar. K was interested in the fact that it could be used in NISA accounts. I’d never heard of it, but I took a look, and here is what I […]
Money Mindsets
There are a few Recently I’ve been noticing how different people seem to think about money. It’s really interesting. Here are some rough categories. Do you know anyone that fits them? Scarcity This could also be called the ‘miser mindset’. Money is something to be held onto and not spent. People with a scarcity mindset […]
Building a House in Japan 4
Creating a Sense of Urgency The house-building saga goes on, and on, and on. In part one I explained why we are suddenly looking for a company to build a house for us. In part two I shared our initial quote, an eye-watering 46 million yen. In part three I showed our latest plans and quote. Now we are hurtling towards an artificial deadline […]
Changes at THEO
More incremental than revolutionary THEO’s newsletter was interesting the other day. Their number of clients seems to be up roughly 6x on what it was last year, but they still only have just over 13,000. I’m a big fan of THEO (you can read all the blog posts on them here), for the following reasons: […]
The New RetireJapan Forum
Like the old forum, but functional… There has been a Forum on the RetireJapan site almost since the beginning. Over the last three years we’ve clocked up almost 1,000 posts on 167 topics. It’s a wonderful resource to ask specific questions or run ideas past the RetireJapan community: should I buy this product? What kind […]