The Monday Read: Living Life Now

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently. To be honest, I have overthought things my whole life, but recently I have been thinking about health, mortality, and making the most of today. I’ve also been reading a lot about AI, and that makes me almost as nervous as climate change. Cheerful stuff.

In terms of money we have the choice between living life now (spending all our money and enjoying things as much as we can), making sure our future life is okay (saving/investing money and being prudent and moderate), and some mixture of the two.

When I was younger I very much lived life now, then from around age 30 to 45 I focused on preparing for the future, and now I have decided to shift the scale more towards the middle.

My mum died when she was 43, and my dad died when he was a similar age. My brother died when he was 38. My mate Mark from uni died in his early 40s.

I’m 45 now. I am in no way guaranteed any more healthy years of life. I had a good chat with my wife today about starting to take more time for ourselves, to spend time together and with friends, and to start treating leisure with similar importance to work.

Don’t plan to take that too far (after all, we could end up living past 100) but it felt really exciting to move the work life balance needle back towards the middle. For now, that means a trip to Europe to see family and friends next month, my first trip to Okinawa in June, and maybe a return to Koh Samui in September.

And more fun Sundays like today.

YouTube

Thank you for your support of the RetireJapan YouTube channel. We did RetireJapan TV episode 6 last week with Emil Gorgees and had a great discussion about mortgages in Japan. Also published a new video about taking emergency action (with your health or finances).

Metrics

Jiu-jitsu training sessions: three (pass)
YouTube videos: one (pass)

Consequences: none (the system is still working!)

The Forum

The Forum is doing well (27,203 posts so far). Here are the latest active threads:

This week’s books

Read City of Dreams, by Don Winslow. It was good enough for me to tear through in a couple of days, but not as good as his masterpiece The Power of the Dog.

Also got stuck into Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. He’s done it again, creating a really compelling portrait of yet another alien race. It’s the second book in a trilogy and both are well worth your time.

This week’s credit card

Found out that my co-host Daniel on RJTV also has the Marriott Bonvoy American Express card, so I thought it might be worth mentioning here.

This is an expensive card, and works best for people who like to stay in somewhat expensive hotels and are into collecting and using air miles. One strength of the card is that you can accumulate Marriott points (which don’t expire) and transfer them to dozens of diffent airline mile programs when you want to use them. I used my points to book my upcoming Europe flights when I could not find availabilty on ANA.

If you are interested in the Marriott card, please sign up via this link. You’ll get a better sign-up bonus and I will get some bonus points 🙂

*this is NOT a good general card. Most people will be better off with a cashback or similar no-fee/low-fee card like Rakuten cards or Amazon cards

This week’s links

1. It’s not just tourists enjoying the cheap yen: Overseas share of Japan hotel investments at highest level since 2014
2. I actually enjoy watching this TV show: Reform or die
3. Don’t want to think about this but doing so will make it easier to deal with. US info but probably a lot of universal stuff in there too: Financial Decisions After the Death of Your Spouse
4. I love risk reward matrices: Avoid The Risky Zones (an example of using it in real life)
5. Interesting conclusion (I wonder how much difference Tokyo/not Tokyo makes): Condo vs. Detached Home: Identifying the Best Property Investment for Living in Japan
6. UK, but likely to be a worldwide trend (funnily enough, we are considering postponing taking our nenkin as long as possible -currently 75): When will you get your state pension? Experts warn some workers may have to wait till they are 74
7. This was good (YouTube). And terrifying: The AI dilemma
8. So true. Find the time: When You’re Too Busy Aiming For It, You Miss The Moments In Front Of You
9. Yikes: Pausing AI Developments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down
10. I love Derek’s stories about life integrated with the local community (something I want nothing to do with, but enjoy reading about): An Account of the Regular General Meeting of the Neighborhood Association
11. Good news, but I would rather move to light electric vehicles (bicycles, tricicles) than electric cars: Have Combustion Vehicle Sales Already Peaked?
12. I can’t tell if Ray Dalio is really clever and insightful, or if everyone is just humoring him because he is so rich: On the Brink of a Period of Great Disorder
13. I agree! I don’t think I will ever stop learning, sharing, teaching: When Will I Retire? How About Never
14. Ha, ha, this has been bugging me recently: When investing is boring
15. This really surprised and saddened me (the court decision, not the original refusal -that kind of thing I am used to): Golf club’s denial of membership to former foreign citizen not illegal: Japan court
16. Devastation and confiscation are definitely risks: Risky Business
17. This is a nice look at how the rich invest (I ‘lost’ a lot of money trying to invest this way): invest like Oprah?
18. I agree we need to overseee social media, but how? Guardrails

What do you think? Anything interesting in there?

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