The Monday Read

The Rainy Season

is here. Apparently. Still pretty nice in Sendai though 🙂

Here are this week’s links:

  1. This essay on Why Nerds are Unpopular was interesting, although I think the US is particularly anti-intellectual in schools.
  2. I thought being a politician in Japan was more lucrative -there goes my post-retirement side gig! Local elections in Japan are running out of candidates and voters
  3. Sounds good to me: Economists Are Obsessed with “Job Creation.” How About Less Work?
  4. Don’t get divorced, and assume you will live longer than you think… Life expectancy for couples: why it’s surprisingly long and what you should do about it
  5. Public service announcement for the summer: Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning
  6. In other news, water wet. Gov’t council says pensions inadequate in aging society
  7. Not sure why they need to exempt anyone… Japan to ban free plastic bags at stores, but small and midsize firms may be exempt
  8. This is good news. If business starts to worry about profits, we’ll see more pressure for governments to take action: World’s biggest firms foresee $1 trillion climate cost hit
  9. This whole thing still feels very ill-thought out. Tax tracking number, sure. Social control mechanism, not a fan. MY NUMBER IN JAPAN: WHAT YOU’LL SOON BE ABLE TO DO WITH YOUR MY NUMBER ID CARD
  10. An academic write-up: Permanent disability social insurance programs in Japan
  11. Really interesting in-depth review: BOOK REVIEW: THE SECRET OF OUR SUCCESS
  12. I don’t think this guy likes Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook Inc. New Employee Manual
  13. This is really excellent: Financial Advice For My New Daughter
  14. And this goes double for Japan: The climate crisis is our third world war. It needs a bold response
  15. My least favourite part of the process of renovating a house: Choosing Bathrooms
  16. Interesting early retirement blog in Japanese: ４５歳でアーリーリタイアして資産生活
  17. These are particularly appropriate for Japan, where self-defence is not legally very clear: Self defence tips for men
  18. Sendai has quite low friction: Cities and Friction
  19. Finally! Toyota speeds up electric vehicle schedule as demand heats up

What do you think? Anything good in there? I really liked #11.

10 Responses

  1. #14 – In my view, it’s not climate change that we should be concerned about. The greatest issue of our times is… [deleted].

    1. Repulsive nonsense. RetireJapan should not allow hate speech to appear in its comments. I certainly will be less likely to read should such comments appear again.

      1. I agree. Comments are not pre-moderated once someone has commented a couple of times, and sadly this is the first time I have felt a need to delete one.

  3. #16 was surprizing to me. Anyone taking early retirement in Japan has the challenge that domestic investment returns would not have a very high sustainable withdrawal rate (at least as tested by the same methodologies as used by Bengen or the Trinity study) but that 45-year-old retiree’s portfolio is almost all company bonds with concentrated risk around two companies (Goldman & Softbank). The REIT side of the portfolio is more diversified (within Japan) but that asset class itself is very volatile.

    1. I also was struck by his/her asset allocation. It is primarily corporate bonds and domestic REITs. The REITS seem to yield quite well but the bonds only yield about 2% after tax as far as I can tell. So it seems a bit of a high risk, low reward allocation to me but maybe I am missing something.

      1. I started following that blog as well and have the same concerns as you folks. Interested to see how well this person will do in the long run

    2. The expenses side is also interesting. His goal is to maintain his expenses under 200,000 p/m, which works out to about 2.3%p/a of his asset portfolio.
      Inflation is not much of a problem in Japan, but assuming his wife is also not working, he seems to be treading a fine line of not needing to draw down on his assets.

      He also has one section of his site devoted to Furusato Nozei. All his purchases there are of non-essentials such as ham, sweets and seafood.
      It is far less glamourous, but I got six months’ worth of rice last year, which helps the family budget much more than a few hundred grams of ham.

  4. #18: Cities and Friction

    In addition to cities, the idea of friction could be used for other things like work, people you have contact with (work or elsewhere), and so on.

    E.g., my wife has a very high friction job, while mine went the other way.