Guest Post: What happens to iDeCo if you die?
iDeCo and other DC pension accounts are NOT treated like other assets when someone dies. Read about designating a beneficiary and making sure your assets are covered.
The Monday Read: Post 900
Welcome to The Monday Read, RetireJapan’s weekly collection of content, musings, and links related to personal finance and life in Japan. This is our 900th post on this blog. Yikes! The first post went live on December 4th, 2013. I don’t think anyone read it at the time 😉 Any ideas to celebrate the 1000 […]
The Monday Read: the End of Summer?
Welcome to The Monday Read, RetireJapan’s weekly collection of content, musings, and links related to personal finance and life in Japan. My daughter said this last week. “I think summer is over.” Now, that might initially seem like something an insane person would say, given that we’ve had 30+ days all week, but I think […]
Investing in Health: Home Gym
Making it easy to do the right thing (this is the latest in our ‘investing in health‘ series of blog posts) I’ve always struggled to maintain an exercise habit. Unlike saving or investing, it is not really possible to put it on autopilot. Over the years I have been a runner (was doing 30km practice […]
Optimizing iDeCo
Just a little spring-cleaning iDeCo accounts are pretty low-maintenance. Once you open the account and decide where you want your contributions to go, you don’t really have to do anything else until you reach the age of 60 and want to get your money (you also have the option of leaving it in the account […]
Buying Mobile Phones
Spend as little as possible I started this year off… poorly, by dropping my mobile phone in the bath. It was a fairly old one, so not waterproof in any way. Despite trying to dry it out in a bag of rice, etc. it never recovered. RIP Nexus 5x, you served me faithfully for 2.5 […]
Other Progress 2018
Bit of a mixed year This is the last progress report, and contains everything else. In a way NISA and iDeCo are easy, because they are a bit of a no-brainer and can be set up and basically ignored after that. Figuring out what else to do is more challenging. This year I did mainly […]
Giving Progress 2018
Start now There are basically two schools of thought regarding giving money away. One says that you should wait until you are rich/comfortable, at which point you will be able to give away more money. The other says that if you don’t give money away when you only have a little, you won’t do so […]
iDeCo Progress 2018
Slow and steady iDeCo is a retirement account (like a US 401k) that locks up your money until you are sixty years old. In exchange, you get to invest pre-tax income (which reduces your income taxes) and won’t get taxed on your investments while they are in the account. When you eventually cash out you […]
NISA Progress 2018
The slow steady grind A NISA account is a way to invest without paying capital gains tax or taxes on dividends. Pretty much anyone who lives in Japan can open one. For more information, check out our Beginner’s Guide to NISA Accounts in Japan. Every year I write a progress report so you can follow […]