I’m really pleased
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 following RetireJapan on Facebook.
It’s also my birthday this week, and I am now forty years old. Felt really strange to type that.
I don’t put much effort into birthdays, and I don’t feel this one is particularly significant, so didn’t do anything spectacular to celebrate. Just a nice meal with my wife and a cake with the family.
I’m saving all the effort for my half-life party (I have arbitrarily decided that I will probably live for about 88 years, so my half-life party will be in four years’ time), when I will travel around the world and visit all the people who are important to me so I can spend some time with them.
I’m also planning to retire from my day job around then. Rest assured, I’ll keep you posted about that 😉
This is also a celebratory post.
The new RetireJapan Forum is going well in it’s new home. If you haven’t seen it yet please head over there and get involved. The community is the best thing about RetireJapan, and the more people ask questions and give advice, the more we all learn.
We have two RetireJapan events coming up, one in Kitakyushu and one in Nagoya. I’m really excited about both of them and hope to see some friendly faces on the day. Please spread the word if you have friends in the area.
The RetireJapan Guide to iDeCo, the first RetireJapan Guide, was published yesterday. I hope it will be the first of many.
The introductory price is 1,000 yen, and it will remain at this price until the next Guide is finished, at which point the price will go up to the regular price of 2,000 yen.
There is a refund policy. If you are not satisfied with the Guide for any reason, just drop me an email and let me know what the problem was and I will happily refund your money. I’ll also try to improve the Guide based on your feedback.
Anyone who buys the Guide will receive any updates we make to it in the future.
The Guides are not books, they are curated PDF reports that summarize various personal finance topics in Japan. They aim to provide as much information as possible in English, and to help people take action and accomplish their goals.
We started with iDeCo because I think it’s a no-brainer for a lot of people to open an account. On the to-do list are NISA, online brokers, building a house (heh!), getting a mortgage, looking for insurance, and many others. If you have a great idea for a Guide please let me know and I’ll add it to the list.
Lastly I’d like to say thank you to everyone who has joined us on this RetireJapan journey so far. It’s been really fun and incredibly educational. I hope we’ve helped some people along the way and am looking forward to continue trying to making everyone’s lives better.
If you have friends that don’t know about RetireJapan please tell them about us. This community gets better and better the more of us there are.
Happy Birthday!
Turning forty is a bit of “thing” for everyone I think. It was a few years ago for me now.
I was kind of dreading it beforehand, but then I was reassured when I woke up the next day with exactly same hangover as always got in my twenties and thirties, and thought, “Yep, I’m still me…”
This site and the forums have been invaluable to me this year as I have set up my NISA and iDeCo accounts, and started investing money, so many thanks to you and all the other members!
Congrats on the book/guide! I will probably pick it up at some point.
Also, I’m wondering if dying at 88 is a lucky number in China 🙂 in all my projections for retirement numbers, I assumed I would die at 80 btw. Males in my family so far don’t run past 73 so I assumed I was adding some good buffer.
Happy birthday and good luck with the next 48 (hopefully more!) years of your life and RT blogging. Your site is an invaluable resource and a great way to start the week.
Happy birthday! And thank you: with help from this site and a bit of luck, my retirement is likely to be a lot more comfortable than it would have been otherwise 🙂
“in all my projections for retirement numbers, I assumed I would die at 80 btw. Males in my family so far don’t run past 73 so I assumed I was adding some good buffer. ”
^^^It’s a slightly (OK, a very) morbid topic, but also a big factor in planning for the future, eh–including financial planning.
My dad passed in his late 50s, and for most of my life I’ve had the same number in my head as my own life expectancy, and have lived accordingly.
Then a few years ago—well into middle age—I met someone, we married, and had a child. Now popping my clogs in my 50s is just not an option. I’ve changed up my lifestyle, my diet, my attitude to my health, and also my approach to handling my finances—I want to do everything I can to make sure I’m here and in good shape for the long haul.
It is morbid, and also important. I really recommend Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: http://www.retirejapan.info/blog/illness-old-age-and-death
My projected life expectancy ranges from a couple of years (my parents died in their forties) to centuries (according to Ray Kurzweil: https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_on_how_technology_will_transform_us).
Stress (at least work stress) is pretty much gone now 🙂
I’m going to go with 88, ’cause it’s a nice number, and like My Time I am going to work on my health next.