The Monday Read

Ocean Day Edition

Ocean day! I assume no one will be reading this until Tuesday 🙂

I have a jiu-jitsu competition today. Wish me luck.

Here are this week’s links:

  1. This is not a profit, any more than the previous ‘loss’ was a loss: Gov’t pension fund posts ¥9.1 tril profit in 4th quarter
  2. I believe this basically applies to Japan too: Why your pension won’t be plundered
  3. Not sure this is worth it, but a lot of people seem to like it: How Much Is the Average Rent in Tokyo in 2019?
  4. This might not be all bad: Baby bust: Japan’s declining population
  5. But it seems to be accelerating: Japan population declines at fastest pace to 124.8 million: gov’t
  6. This is really scummy behaviour -be careful of people trying to sell you things: Japan Post unit admits to mismanaging 90,000 insurance policies
  7. Nice simple guide: How to apply for a Rakuten credit card
  8. Haven’t seen any of these in the wild yet: Japan starts minting coins stamped with new imperial era ‘Reiwa’
  9. Google gave me one of these the other week. Not entirely sure why: Google workers can listen to what people say to its AI home devices
  10. I have an inclination towards generalising: Generalise, don’t specialise: why focusing too narrowly is bad for us
  11. Is this actually a thing, or is more ‘only in Japan’ reporting? Using their loaf: Japanese elevate humble art of toast

What do you think? Anything good in there?

Discussion Threads and Comments

  1. How to get a credit card (Forum)
  2. Invest in NISA or wait to invest in TFSA in Canada (Forum)
  3. Drum type vs top-loading washing machine (Forum)
  4. Rakuten tsumitate NISA question (Forum)
  5. Shinsei is screwing their regular customers again: PSA: Shinsei will start charging for incoming foreign remittances (Reddit)

No new books this week.

6 Responses

  1. I’m with you on #2, I think this is true for most developed countries. In the US, the projections for Social Security income face the same demographic problems as in Japan (ratio of retirees to employees favors the first group). However, I don’t believe that this means that SS will disappear, there are many options available to bring it back in balance and keep it solvent. My guesstimate (a total swag) is I’ll get 2/3 of the projected amount.
    As for #11, you may not see it much up there, but shokupan is big in the metropolitan Tokyo area. There are many bakeries scattered around, even in the neighborhoods where we live in southern Kanagawa Prefecture. My wife is an aficionado, she has her favorites and likes it sliced very thick. We’ve bought the bread they bake at the Centre bakery mentioned in the story many times, and it’s a rare occasion when you don’t have to wait an hour to buy the bread. It’s so popular that one person can buy no more than 3 loaves at a time. It’s not just Tokyo, it’s also big in Nagoya.

  2. Ben,

    Do national universities have an early retirement program for teachers who wish to retire early? In the West some companies “buy out” employees who are considered to be too expensive for the company, and then replace these older employees with temp workers or contract workers.

    1. I’ve seen voluntary early retirement at our place from 55, but I am not sure what it entails 🙂

    2. Mine didn’t, but given the conditions there, staying on till the end was an easy given. (My wife will be quitting early, or so she says.)

      Of course you can quit anytime you want, but the numbers on the severance pay chart ‘encourage’ you to stay (and other schools’ charts differ, this is an individual case). Extreme would be if I quit two weeks before my formal retirement–I’d then only get about 2/3 – 3/4 of the severance allowance as full retirement only two weeks later. Similar if I would have quit five years earlier. There were different columns in the chart with different multiples of monthly salary, and for a given number of years employed, the multiples were different for quitting on your own vs. reaching the prescribed retirement age.

      Another factor is taxes on severance. The more years you have in before taking that, the less your tax will be. More years and calculated tax goes down. Fewer years mean less severance and a higher tax on it besides. (Trying to think if age was also a factor–over 60+, it might’ve been but I can’t remember.) I think I only lost about 4% to taxes on that lump sum payout, I was expecting the NTA would take more.

  3. Hi Ben, have you noticed the forum seems to be broken for the last few days? Seems to be in debug mode or something.

    1. Yep, went down on Thursday or so. Seems like PHP updated, and the forum software is out of date and needs to be updated. Unfortunately it is not very user(idiot?)-friendly, so I am not confident I can do it without nuking the forum. Looking for someone to help me fix it.

      Hopefully it will be back up soon. Apologies for the invonvenience 🙁