Surprisingly effective
There is a shrine on a small island off the coast of Miyagi. The shrine is over a thousand years old. The island is uninhabited other than the shrine custodians.
Once a year on September 25th, a ceremony is held at the shrine. The shrine’s god is brought down from the top of the mountain, and supplicants from all over Japan (and even other countries) get on small boats and attend in the hope of being blessed.
Legend says that people who participate in the ceremony three years in a row will never want for money again.
My wife and I have joined the ceremony five times. We first came in 2018, drawn by the novelty of it. I expected it to annoy me and wasn’t planning to come more than once.
But the shrine is beautiful, the ceremony haunting, the location spectacular. Getting there is a bit of an adventure and the hotel we stayed at nearby is cheap and excellent value. The food is decent and the silence and sea views are healing.
We went again in 2019. Enjoyed it again.
In 2020 there was a typhoon in the area on September 24th. We got a phone call from the shrine telling us the ceremony was cancelled as no boats would make it to the island. Decided to go and stay in the hotel anyway.
Then we realized that this reset the clock. We’d have to do another three years.
2021 and 2022 we attended the ceremony. The shrine paid lip service to the pandemic, but went ahead with the ceremony (they didn’t advertise it publicly but instead sent out letters to people who had attended in the past). Attendance was a bit less than usual.
This year was packed: there were a couple of hundred people at the event, many of them business owners and presidents. There were people from Miyagi, from Tokyo, from Kansai, Kyushu, and even Korea.
It was also our third year in a row.
I had a thought after someone commented on The Monday Read last week. The crowd for this are kind of self-selecting.
In the past, getting here once, let alone three years in a row, would have been extremely challenging. The terrain, the distance, the dangers of the trip meant that only determined and wealthy people would manage it.
They would likely not have wanted for money anyway, even without any help from the shrine.
Nowadays, the ceremony seems to appeal to an entrepreneurial crowd. Likewise, they are likely to be more motivated and capable than the average person, at least in the financial arena.
I was curious, so I looked at my old monthly tracking spreadsheets.
In 2018 when we first stumbled across the wealth ceremony, we were doing quite well for ourselves after a decade of saving and investing. We had about 16 years’ worth of living expenses in liquid investments.
Now, five years later, and after successfully completing the 3 years in a row, we have just over 31 years’ worth.
I think this shows the power of saving, investing in something sensible, and leaving it to grow over time rather than the supernatural power of the god of gold mountain shrine, but I am happy to hedge my bets by doing both.
(if you need some help on the basics of personal finance, do spend some time on the RetireJapan website.)
We’ll be coming back to the shrine next year, not in a private capacity this time but as representatives of our respective businesses, to see if another three years of offerings will make a difference there too.
And also to enjoy a few days of the food, the outside bath, and the peace and quiet at the hotel.
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Within living expenses, are you including payments into iDeCo/Nisa investments, UK/JP pensions and current loans (if any)? Any by liquid investments, do you mean cash and stock/bond indexes in iDeco/Nisa?
Living expenses are how much money we would need to live in retirement (annually). It’s a rough estimate of how much we’d need for a decent lifestyle. It does not include saving or investing because we’d be drawing down at that point, not contributing.
Liquid investments are everything we own other than real estate and things (cars etc.). Cash and investments. I do include iDeCo in this even though we would not be able to access it until age 60 at the earliest.