Investment Losses
A paper tiger? I’ve had a number of very similar emails this year from people who started investing recently after reading some articles on RetireJapan. They basically all write something like: I opened an account, set it up, bought some investments, and now they are in the red and I am worried. This is perfectly […]
The Monday Read
18 degrees in Tokyo today? This has been an extremely busy week, as you can clearly see in the paucity of links and books below. Quality not quantity though, eh? 😉 I’ve had a few emails recently with questions that are great content for blog posts. If you have a question and can’t find the […]
Leaving Japan
What happens to your investments? I had a great question this week from a reader by email. When I started thinking about it I realised it would probably take me a couple of hours to answer it properly, so I decided to write a blog post instead. That way we get to share the information […]
The Monday Read
January is over Very cold in Sendai the last few days -seems like I am feeling it more this year… age? Illness? No flu yet though, fingers crossed on that one 🙂 Here are this week’s links: How are your plans looking? If your Golden Week trip’s not reserved yet, it might already be too […]
Problems in Japanese Schools
Sometimes you have to make some noise A slightly different post today, not really about personal finance or investing. Never fear, we’ll be back to our regular programming next week 🙂 I read this post on Debito’s blog last week, and it really upset me. I could vividly imagine the feelings of the parents, and […]
The Monday Read
Brexat I wasted several hours of my life last week following the Brexit debate. Now I can’t see a way clear for the country. Game over, both for the UK and for my European passport. On the other hand the RetireJapan Forum went over 3,000 posts last week. I’m really happy with how positive a […]
Optimizing iDeCo
Just a little spring-cleaning iDeCo accounts are pretty low-maintenance. Once you open the account and decide where you want your contributions to go, you don’t really have to do anything else until you reach the age of 60 and want to get your money (you also have the option of leaving it in the account […]
The Monday Read
Milder than usual This winter seems a lot warmer than usual. I remember most years needing a hat and gloves in January, but this year I can walk around outside without them. It’s quite pleasant if you ignore the hints of climate change… Here are this week’s links: Ten-day golden week this year: are you […]
Buying Mobile Phones
Spend as little as possible I started this year off… poorly, by dropping my mobile phone in the bath. It was a fairly old one, so not waterproof in any way. Despite trying to dry it out in a bag of rice, etc. it never recovered. RIP Nexus 5x, you served me faithfully for 2.5 […]
The Monday Read
What are you going to do with 2019? My 2019 started… poorly, with me dropping my phone in the bath (goodbye phone). I now have a new one though, never fear. The one good thing about having no phone over the winter break is that I got A LOT of reading done. Check out the […]