Surprisingly fun ;)
I was down in Kyushu on Saturday to give a talk to Kitakyushu JALT. A bunch of RetireJapan members came out too and we had a great event.
This was something like the tenth RetireJapan event, and I think we have the content down now. The first hour was a lecture about personal finance and investing in Japan, followed by another hour or so of question and answer session. The Q&A is the most fun part for me as I get to hear what people are interested in and invariably learn new things.
There seems to be a real hunger out there for impartial information about personal finance in English, and the main purpose of the RetireJapan project is to provide it.
I’ll be doing another event in Nagoya on Saturday, and if you’d like to come to that the deadline to sign up is Wednesday. If you have any friends in the area please tell them to come along 🙂
If you are connected to any group and would like to host a RetireJapan event, please get in touch.
And of course there isn’t enough time to go deep into personal finance in just an hour. Ideally we’d have a week or so.
In January we’ll be running an online course on personal finance in Japan. We’ll announce the details next month, but it will be over the course of a month and be much more interactive, with readings and exercises to do. I’m really excited about the potential. Stay tuned for more details!
In the meantime we’ve got a lot of exciting content coming up on the blog. Posts about more tax reporting changes, backpaying nenkin, thinking about expenses, and a lot more.
If you would be willing to be interviewed for a Reader Profile I would love to hear from you. If there is anything you’d like to see on the blog or site please let me know. If you haven’t joined the new forum yet please check it out.
I also noticed RetireJapan was mentioned in the Japan Times last month. Pretty cool 😀
Have a great week!
Ben, great to see how you’re progressively turning what was “just” a blog into a series of resourceful events and more ways to get this PF knowledge in Japan. Great stuff 🙂
Thanks, SB. It still feels like a hobby, so I guess I will carry on while it remains fun 🙂
I’m also really aware of how much this is a group effort too. RetireJapan would be almost worthless without all the comments, shares, and questions! It’s a community more than anything.