2023 Planning

Goals for this year

Every year we start things off here on the blog with a look ahead, both for the site and me personally. Here is last year’s post for comparison.

2022 was a year of changes. In 2023 I am going to build on those changes and try to have more by doing less. This is the intro to my annual plan for 2023:

Each year I choose a kanji focus. This year’s is 省, short for 省く (habuku) which means to omit, eliminate, curtail. I want to make way for the things I want to do by getting rid of the bad habits that don’t add anything to my life.

What is in store for RetireJapan in 2023?

So many things 🙂

There are a bunch of things we do well. The forum and the Monday Read are probably the most consisent. I’m pretty satisfied with those.

I would like to write more on the blog this year. My rough goal is a post a week (on top of the Monday Read).

The YouTube channel is going quite well now. Taking the Part-time YouTuber Academy course really helped. I’ll be doing a video review about that soon.

The site needs a bit of a rewrite. It should be easier to find information, and the information should be more comprehensive and up to date. Expect some improvement here.

I’m going to have to update the NISA guide again! Argh. Also the iDeCo guide is well overdue for an update. As always, anyone who purchased the guides in the past will get the updated version for free. You can see the Guides here.

We’re thinking of doing an in-person or hybrid conference this year. Probably after the summer, and probably in Tokyo. More details soon, but if you have access to or know of a good venue please let me know!

We’re going to work on the Your First Ten Million Yen course, and run two cohorts this year (on in February-April and one later in the year). We have some places left on the upcoming course if you have friends/colleagues/family members that might find it useful.

I still haven’t passed the Financial Planner test, so am planning to have another try at that this year.

So lots to do, and hopefully more time to do it in, although I am feeling busier than ever now that I am ‘retired’

And our personal plans

I called us reaching our ‘number’ last year and finished (hopefully) formal work. I am not planning to look for a new job… ever, but I do enjoy working on various projects. Principal among them is RetireJapan, and a close second is helping my wife run her English school.

In terms of investing I will continue to:

• max out iDeCo (67,000 yen a month now, finally!)
• pay fuka nenkin (the reason iDeCo isn’t 68,000 yen a month)
• max our tsumitate NISA (seemed like the best option as we are not able to roll over legacy NISA accounts into the new NISA from 2024
• continue investing 50,000 yen a month into mutual funds
• continue paying into the UK state pension on a voluntary basis
• try to max out my grandchildren’s Junior NISA accounts (this is the last year before the system ends in December)

My wife will:

• max out iDeCo (also 67,000 yen a month)
• max out the medium-small business savings plan
• continue to max out tsumitate NISA
• invest in dividend paying Japanese stocks in taxable accounts
• help me with paying into Junior NISA accounts

We’ll see how that goes this year and then adjust as necessary going forward. I would like to max out our new NISA accounts as soon as possible (you can do this in just over four years by paying in the maximum 3.6m yen a year from 2024), and we’re going to need to figure out what we want to do as we transition to retirement.

It’s our 20 year wedding anniversary in 2024, so we would like to take an extended trip and go and see some places on the bucket list (Iceland, Turkey, etc.). Going to be looking into getting Round the World tickets, probably with Star Alliance.

So 2023 is going to be more grappling with my new lifestyle. I have a lot of personal things to work on too, especially health and relationships. How about you? Any changes of direction in store? What are you planning to do?