Overseas Inheritances in Japan
Not as bad as I thought We’ve talked about inheritance tax in Japan before. The TL;DR is that they are not as onerous as people think and most people are not really going to be affected by them. This week I learned that Japanese inheritance tax on overseas inheritances is much more favourable than I […]
The Monday Read
The Best Rainy Season Ever I am loving the weather this week. Warm, dry, sunny, fun playful kind of wind. Spent the whole week trying to find excuses to get out in the sun and get my vitamin D in. Long may it continue! Encouragingly, vaccinations in Japan seem to be picking up. They have […]
The Monday Read
Vaccination fun week Vaccination reservations for the over-65s in Sendai started last Monday, so my wife is getting very stressed trying to book appointments for her parents (in their 80s). So far no luck. Rather than the central government or local governments organising bookings, seems like it has been delegated all the way down to […]
Book Review: Die With Zero
This mediocre book is the best thing I have read for a while There is a new pandemic spreading across the world. Not Covid-21 thankfully, but rather every single personal finance blog is reviewing Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. The author is a somewhat unrelateable natural gas trader/hedge fund manager/movie producer/high stakes poker player […]
Another Nenkin Case Study
Housewife/self-employed Today we have another riveting nenkin case study for you. This time it is an example of someone who has mainly paid into kokumin nenkin (the basic pension) rather than kosei nenkin (the ‘salaryman’ pension). The person kindly shared their nenkin annual statement (年金定期便) with me, so we’ll just go through the numbers and […]
The Monday Read
Die With Zero edition Seems like everyone and their dog read Die With Zero this week. I did too! So we’ll be doing a full review on the blog next week. Spoiler: I thought it wasn’t a particularly good book, but found immense value in it. I also managed to write a few blog posts […]
Property Tax 2021
It’s still more expensive than a house would have been Just got our bill for property tax for this year. It is pretty much the same as last year, so not particularly interesting unless you don’t own a property and are interested in how much tax might be. Property tax is based on the assessed […]
Interviewing Smart Money Asia
Expat personal finance made simple? A couple of weeks I was doing some online searching for personal finance and investing in Japan in English, and while I was disappointed that RetireJapan didn’t show up as much as I expected, I did find an interesting site. When I saw the site owner Martin also did fee-only […]
The Monday Read
Rainy season??? Well, it’s only early May, and yet here in Sendai it is getting unseasonably humid. Hopefully it’s just a temporary thing rather than an acceleration of the seasons! Seems like the Japanese government is getting a bit worried about how the general public views their vaccination efforts so far and things seem to […]
The Monday Read
Golden Week Baby! Rain and unreliable weather so far this Golden Week. Probably for the best. Can’t believe we are still in this situation a year later, but it is what it is. We are staying home, I am playing chess online and board games with my granddaughter, and hopefully going cycling with my wife […]