Back in Sendai, and it is good to be home. I’ve missed my daily routine, spending time with the family, and knowing where everything is.
It’s also nice to be back at work, so to speak. There are quite a few things on the horizon!
I’m working on RetireJapan’s first video course (The Basics of Personal Finance in Japan). Our two guides (iDeCo and NISA) are due for 2024 editions. And the next cohort of our Your First Ten Million Yen course will be launching in December (you can sign up for more information here).
For any English school owners out there, I will be speaking at the Future of English Schools in Japan event on November 12th (both in person and online attendance possible).
And of course, we’re back to our regular programming here on the blog, and on…
YouTube
Thank you for your support of the RetireJapan YouTube channel. We published a new videos this week on situational awareness in personal finance. It is a very basic concept, but one that you can’t avoid if you want to reach your financial goals.
Please watch, like, subscribe, and share with other people!
Craig Mod is doing another popup email list
These are always a really good read, and your data is deleted once the walk is over. You will usually get a daily email for a week or two. Sign up to get updates from his upcoming Tokyo walk here.
The Forum
The Forum is doing well (30,520 posts so far). Here are the latest active threads:
This week’s books
I finished Between the Devil and the Deep, and it ended up being much better than it initially seemed to start out. Recommend if you are interested in diving.
Also started reading The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene. Much more readable than I expected! I loved The Prince so am expecting to enjoy this.
This week’s links
- I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing: choosing to work to keep active or because you enjoy it seems to be very healthy. A Third of Japanese People Aged 70 to 74 Still in the Workforce
- Just one thing after another: Kishida’s autumn of discontent
- Chris Broad’s take on nuisance streamers/YouTubers in Japan (YouTube): These Foreigners Are Ruining Japan
- I’m tempted to get one of these: Japan’s bestselling EV isn’t a Tesla but a $13,000 minicar
- This is really interesting: nice graphic! Origins of Japan’s foreign residents shift over 3 decades, further change expected: expert
- Also seeing a lot of pressure on businesses from lack of cheap labour recently: Surge in bankruptcies among takoyaki, okonomiyaki, yaki soba shops
- Very interesting approach to retirement spending: “Our retirement withdrawal plan beats the 4% rule,” say these clever retirees
- Pretty grim reading: Is gold a good investment?
- I am not into crypto but Martin is usually worth reading: Bitcoin – Pump up the Volume!
- I do something similar to this: The only formula you’ll ever need for creating secure, easy-to-remember passwords for everything
- That increase in accommodation costs is INSANE: Tokyo consumer prices rise 2.7 percent; accommodation fees jump 42.8 percent
- Eeek. Germany to seize Japan’s third-biggest economy crown
- I find I need really strong rules to avoid this: On Disruption and Distraction
- At all cost, avoid increasing your base living expenses: Feeling broke
What do you think? Anything interesting in there?
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#7 – I’ve always wondered if a flat 4 or 5% of portfolio vale at each year’s end / start wouldn’t be better than an inflation adjusted one as it would result in taking less in down years but allow you more in up years. And you don’t have to spend it all in a good year, so you might have some extra or even some to reinvest. Probably someone cleverer than me can explain why this is a stupid idea!
That’s what I’m planning to do: take a flat 5% of the portfolio each year.
The risk is that amount not being enough to live on, but following that rule you cannot run out of money 😁
#7 IMHO is like me saying I ran across the road blindfolded twice and survived so it’s a safe thing to do. They’ve been retired for only 3 years; and no mention of Sequence of Returns Risk. Produce 30-year comparisons for every 30-year period in the last, say, 100 years, like the famous study mentioned, and then let’s look. And reducing the withdrawal in the years when the markets fall – how many years would that be on average in any 30-year period? And even if it is a better system, that means keeping things manual until you’re in your 90s. No thanks!
On another note, I would love to be able to travel 100 years into the future and see what the average return on eMaxis All Country will be. Being diversified usually means safety, but mixing in ‘weaker’ economies does not necessarily mean so if they remain weaker economies or are replaced by newly weak economies. I sometimes wonder if it would be better to invest in the S&P 500 instead (I’m not American).
The guy that created the 4% rule now recommends taking more 😀
And the original rule as written requires you to calculate inflation each year.
Ultimately it’s about figuring out a system that works for you.
As for world stock market vs US stock market, personally I don’t think it matters. There is enough overlap that they will perform similarly.
One will be better than the other, but we can’t predict that in advance and as long as you end up with enough, who cares?
> And the original rule as written requires you to calculate inflation each year.
That’s an easy calculation to make. Having to keep your eye on global economies/stock markets is a different kettle of fish.
> Ultimately it’s about figuring out a system that works for you.
What I was trying to say is that there are no hard and fast rules but if a scheme is backtested for 100 years and shows a 90% positive result then that is something I can work with. Or more exactly, place some trust in. ‘Working for me’ surely means working for everyone. That is, balancing risk and possible outcomes on a long-established record of outcomes, despite the fact that past performance… etc.. This article doesn’t provide that.
#10 Passwords. Very interesting and very helpful. Will consider something similar going ahead.
#4 After reading, I was thinking I should get one too.
But looking into it, there is the first up cost of buying one, then the cost of installing the charger at your home (300,000 – 500,000yen for a normal chademo one). Charging on a normal one from home costs about 800yen for a full charge which is about 120km (according to what people are saying on the net, not the specs which say 180km). For me it’s about 20km to work, 40km return. So that’s about 800yen for 3 days. Then of course the batteries are expensive to replace and last only about 8 years. On top of that the usual insurance, taxes (reduced at the start) and maintenance.
The other thing is there aren’t enoughcharging stations around. In my town there are zero! And where there are I’ve read quite a bit about people having to wait a long time a) to charge (about 40mins) and b) to wait for other people to finish charging. Was reading some people waiting for a couple of hours.
One more thing is it uses the Chademo charging system (which isn’t used much overseas now I read). All good if you are just using that but what if in the future you want to but a Tesla or something else that uses a different charger? I’m guessing you’d have to pay those same costs again to get a new charger installed. I wonder if in the future there will be a move towards providing one charger to rule them all? Would maybe knock prices down, give people more freedom in choosing EVs and help people get through the initial set up cost barrier. Would probably also help with apartments/mansions deciding which to choose if any.
I would love to get an EV, but I’ll probably wait for a bit for everything to improve. It might not be too much of a problem in the city, but unfortunately in the country, petrol still rules.
Fair enough. Always good to be aware of the numbers.
You don’t need a high speed charger though, you can do it from a normal socket. Charging cables are expensive, but not that expensive: https://www3.nissan.co.jp/vehicles/new/sakura/accessories/charging.html#powerCable
If you are charging at home you just plug it in when you get back and it’s charged in the morning. No need to top up outside unless you are on an extended trip.
Presumably the cost of electricity is less than the cost of gasoline right now for the same distance? Even our Aqua hybrid would cost more than 800 yen for 120 km I believe.
#5 was fascinating. My wife is originally from Vietnam (her family escaped on a boat in 1979 and eventually settled in California after time in refuge camps in Thailand) and we were interested to see how the Vietnamese population here has increased so much.