400 Posts

I meant to write this on Monday, but instead had to call the market correction/crash 😉

As a quick follow-up to that post, I’ve read optimistic and pessimistic articles about the stock market. Bear in mind that no-one knows what is going to happen. If they did, they certainly wouldn’t be on TV giving away their edge. And remember that most journalists writing about investing probably aren’t investing significant amounts of their own money.

My advice: hunker down and ignore the noise. In a year or two you won’t even remember what happened this week or this month.

But on to happier things. This is the 401st post on this blog. Once again, I missed the actual milestone post. Like I did with the 300th post too.

​It’s interesting looking back at the 101st post. We listed five goals in it, and I think it’s fair to say we have accomplished all five to a certain extent:

1. Build the community here and on the site’s Facebook page. We now have 650 email subscribers and over 800 follows on Facebook. The forum is really good at answering questions. And we get a decent number of comments on some posts.

2. Write some short books on personal finance, investing, etc. Two down, quite a few to go. I used to think I could write four of these a year, but given the other ongoing projects I am working on that doesn’t seem to be realistic. Going to shoot for one or two new books per year instead.

3. Learn more about helping people with their finances. Well, I didn’t pass the Financial Planner test yet, but I have learned a lot about helping people. This year I started working with a few people one on one, and it’s been very interesting so far. I’ll make an announcement when I am ready to take on new clients.

4. Organize more public lectures and workshops in Japan. Sadly the online course didn’t happen this time, but I do have a couple of lectures in the pipeline (they are not public, unfortunately). Please do contact me if you would like me to come and talk to your group.

5. Share more ideas from other people. Guest posts and reader profiles are some of my favourite posts on the blog. Please do get in touch if you are interested in contributing.

So I guess we should probably set some new goals. To make things extra interesting, they should probably be somewhat ambitious, so that I have something to write about in post 1000 😉

Here are some things we will try to do at RetireJapan by 2022 (when I am planning to leave my day job*):

1. Completely redesign the site to make it easier to find information and to help more people find RetireJapan. This will probably happen this year. You can help by telling people about us.
2. Create different ways for people to get information and help from RetireJapan, from the free resources on the site, to cheap online guides, and more personal bespoke services.
3. Develop the resource sections of the site to help people find quality service providers and products in Japan and abroad.
4. Get featured in mainstream media and other blogs/sites in Japan and abroad.
5. Found an annual conference for personal finance in Japan. 

Some real stretch goals in there, but nothing too impossible. It’s not like we’re trying to launch huge reusable rockets or anything.

How about you? Any ideas for the site? What should we be doing that we aren’t already?

* me leaving my job has nothing to do with RetireJapan being profitable or successful. Quite the opposite, in fact!