The Monday Read

I’m back, did you miss me?

Well, I got out of the hospital yesterday 🙂

Was in there for eighteen days in the end, and while that probably wasn’t entirely necessary, it was a positive experience overall. The food was better than I expected, the surgery went well with no complications so far, and the nurses and staff were great. If you are friends with me on Facebook you heard about my stay in excruciating detail. For those of you lucky enough to escape that fate, I think I’ll get 2-5 blog posts out of my surgery/hospitalization. お楽しみ！

Blessed

I had a lot of time to think on the inside, and one thing I was thinking about was what a pleasure and a privilege it is to run this site.

I started RetireJapan in late 2013, so have been running it for about seven and a half years. From day one it’s been interesting and fun, I have learned so much, and I think we’ve been able to do some good in the world. Thanks for being part of the experience!

Another milestone

This is actually blog post number 705. It turns out that the Online Seminar at Fukui JALT was number 700, but I didn’t notice at the time 🙂

Email list

Just a quick heads up: our mailing list provider charges us for the number of people on it, and we recently crossed into the next level which tripled our costs. Looking at the data, there are a lot of people on the list who haven’t opened one of our emails for a while.

In May we are planning to delete anyone who hasn’t opened an email for the last six months so if you haven’t been opening emails but want to stay on the list make sure you open an email in April!

The Forum

The forum is jumping, as usual. Here are the latest active posts:

Supporters

We started the RetireJapan supporter program at the end of last year, and a surprising number of people selflessly signed up. Having a steady source of funds to go towards the site running costs is amazingly helpful, so if you find RetireJapan valuable and can spare 200 yen a month, please do consider becoming a supporter. You will get absolutely nothing back in return, other than the satisfaction of supporting the site 😉

Reading

I did a lot of reading in the hospital (although less than I was hoping to). Mostly I read through my Iain M. Banks collection (one of my favourite SF authors), although I also picked up Considering Stocks, by Heikki Keskiväli which I am enjoying so far.

This week’s links

We have… rather a lot of links for you this week!

1. Burn these into your brain: Four things everyone needs to know about the markets
2. Time to work less? Work, a deep history
3. This was very intereseting: A conversation with Howard Marks
4. The perils of scale: Too much, too soon, too fast
5. The Olympics should have just been cancelled completely: It’s official spectators from abroad will not be allowed at Tokyo Olympics
6. Not exactly what I wanted, but the response is the same. Stick to the plan and ignore the noise: The economy is going to boom
7. Hard to come up with the opposite argument for this one: How could you be bearish on the economy right now?
8. More like what do I do if I don’t retire? When should I retire?
9. This is hilarious. I’m pretty optimistic too: Ray Dalio and the power of setting defaults for optimism
10. One of my favourite money blogs (living a FI) is alive again!!! 2021 early retirement update
11. Pretty mind-boggling. Talk about value for money! The B-52 Stratofortress
12. This relationship is doomed. Nothing worse than having different values from your partner: My girlfriend says I’ve enough money for both of us
13. I try to keep an open mind: A lot of the woo-woo probably works
14. I like Vitaliy: My interview with worldclassperformer
15. It seems unfair that this guy can write as well as he can: Scott Alexander reviews Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile
16. Quelle surprise. I hope they don’t try and find alternative uses for this: Japan spends billions on technology for absent Olympic fans
17. I love this. I don’t get much email, but try to think about it in a similar way: On Robert Heinlein’s analogue autoresponder
18. I have 2-3 of these: Five investing powers
19. Found this very interesting, both for the glimpse of what English teaching is like in Spain, and because this person spends a lot of time thinking about what to buy. I spend no time thinking about what to buy, but lots of time thinking about investing Money Diary TEFL Teacher in Spain
20. I really hope they hurry up on this one: we have a lot of trucks driving around and through Sendai, and if they could not be pumping out poisonous gas all day long that would be great: Toyota, Isuzu, Hino join in truck technology tie-up
21. This is one way to approach investing. I actually do this with some of our investments (the rest in in low-cost index funds): Build your own basic income with dividends
22. This was an interesting case study. Fairly well off after a well-paid career but seems somewhat financially illiterate: How I manage my money retired IT worker
23. This is great. Might try some of this. My chess level is awful Chess Ultralearning
24. I rarely think about PDFs, but I use them every day: The inside story of the PDF
25. Some timely advice from MMM: Beware of the bubble
26. It’s never too late: How to make up lost ground if you got a late start saving for retirement
27. This is why we buy the index, gentlefolk: Why Competitive Advantages Die
28. This is disgraceful. Truly disgraceful. But not surprising: Media Mix on TEPCO and the Fukushima cleanup
29. Makes sense to me (I am also very privileged): Dealing with privilege
30. This is one solution to the environmental crisis I guess: Most couples may have to use assisted reproduction by 2045
31. I’m looking forward to getting rid of our cars. Once I don’t need to drive to work we can probably get rid of one, then when we both stop working we’ll get rid of the other. Even now they are almost not worth the money and hassle of ownership: Baby you can park my car
32. Do you feel lucky? I do not, so I mainly buy the index: The Bessembinder factor
33. Medicine seems to be accelerating. Good: How mRNA technology could change the world
34. This is a wonderful resource to learn about small Japanese companies: Teddy Letter
35. A post from the past. I’m really starting to see the snowball in action this year. Kind of creeps up on you and then… boom. When the snowball starts rolling
36. I’ve missed Flula. This is a good one: My crypto friend calls me every day and this is what he sounds like
37. A good question: This is the test to apply to everything
38. Really agree with this. We’re pretty much at the point where more money wouldn’t make much material difference to our lives (just grow our resilience): Not wanting something is as good as having it
39. I still struggle with this, although I’m getting better at managing it: Ten ways to prevent aging/burnout
40. Life is short
41. I love this blog, mostly about food in Thailand: The art of making lists

Phew! Now that is a jumbo-sized Monday Read! Anything good in there? For me definitely #10 and #34 this time.