The Monday Read

Still enjoying the summer

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I have to make a sudden trip to Europe, so posts might be late/missing over the next couple of weeks. Moushiwake arimasen (but at least I didn’t falsify any quake safety data).

  1. The Japanese stock market is doomed because of financial illiteracy? Japan’s dying shareholders signal sombre outlook for its stocks.
  2. Bonds? Allow Myself to Contradict…Myself.
  3. ​I got seven: 7 goals to hit by 45.
  4. (Very) slow and steady: A Lost Decade of Dollar Cost Averaging.
  5. ​Fauxtomation: the automation charade.
  6. Nice (long) write-up of furusato nozei: Japan’s Hometown Tax.
  7. This is why flights to Sweden go via Bangkok: Why the world’s flight paths are such a mess.
  8. Sadly I don’t think we’re going to see this: We need a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty – and we need it now.
  9. ​I like this guy’s 10% rule: scale interview.
  10. ​Quit while you’re ahead: Humble exits.
  11. Nice guide to kokumin nenkin (it is compulsory): Everything You Wanted To Know About Not Paying Pension.
  12. Fantastic inverview with Jeff Bezos (Amazon).
  13. The meaning of life? What I Learned About Life at My 30th College Reunion.
  14. People who invest make money in bull markets: World’s billionaires became 20% richer in 2017, report reveals.
  15. I kind of hope there is a crash soon: Bearing gifts.
  16. Is a bear market coming? Ignore the signs.
  17. For most people saving is more important than investing: Where is the snowball?
  18. I’m going to add these to my annual review: Martin Short’s Nine Categories for Self Evaluation.
  19. An interesting dilemma: The locksmith’s paradox.
  20. Really enjoyed finding this blog: Am I going to be okay?
  21. Annuities might be worth considering: ​The Annuity Puzzle: How Big is the Free Lunch Being Left on the Table?

What do you think? Anything good in there? I particularly enjoyed/was interested in #1, 5, 7, 8, 12, 17, 19, 20, 21. Think it’s a pretty good lineup this week 🙂

And here are some books I finished/bought/started reading:

  • Becoming the Black Belt by Roy Dean. This was better than his first book and I very much enjoyed reading it. Really want to know what happens next though.
  • How to Fight a Hydra by Josh Kaufman (The Personal MBA). This book is about entrepreneurship and work, but it is also a literal guide to fighting a hydra. Thought-provoking and fun.
  • The Jiu-Jitsu Answer Man by Roy Harris. Very knowledgeable FAQ about Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
  • Gone by Michael Grant. First in a very popular YA (young adult) series. Checking it out for my reading program (but I also not-so-secretly enjoy reading YA fiction).

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13 Responses

  1. Thank you for the links. I think #21 on annuities is just wrong. Notice how their example (0% bond investing) is a very weak straw man for comparison to risk sharing via an annuity. A 4% withdrawal rule beats the return on an annuity for most people in early retirement and will also in most cases result in leaving a substantial inheritance for your heirs. Annuities are poor investments for most of us especially when they are expensive as they are now in a low interest rate environment.

    1. You may be right. I am still planning to look into annuities once I get closer to ‘retiring’. I like the idea of using pensions and possibly annuities to lock in an ‘income floor’ that enables me survive financially, and using self-managed investments to generate ‘play’ income above that.
      Need to look into what is available in Japan. This certainly wasn’t a great option: http://www.retirejapan.info/blog/annuities-in-japan

      1. You already have an annuity from the Japanese pension system and your eligibility for the UK pension (if I recall your situation correctly). Whole life annuities like the one mentioned in the earlier post are almost always poor products because the insurance company has built in a hefty fee and prices the annuity based on what they can get from risk-free investments (government bonds and highly rated corporate bonds). You’d like to buy an annuity from Warren Buffett, where your risk is being pooled with all the rest of us at Retirejapan or better yet, combined with drug-adled helmetless motorcycle riders who will die before many annuity payments. Warren invests the pool of money so he can afford to pay you a better yearly payment than you could create for yourself and those short-lived motorcycle riders are an attractive group of annuitants (but poor group for life insurance). Not even Warren Buffett sells that kind of annuity. They are inherently poor products because the insurance company is a very conservative investor.

      2. Ha, ha, indeed. If you find the drug-addled helmetless motorbike rider annuity scheme please let me know about it 🙂

    2. Yeah, a good starting point for figuring things out?!?!
      “…Jane is a 65-year-old single woman in good health who has $1mm of savings and receives social security income, which takes care of her ‘subsistence’ needs. For simplicity, let’s say she has no interest in future charitable or family bequests,4 so her wealth has no utility to her unless she consumes it in her lifetime. We’ll also assume the only available investment is an inflation-indexed bond that pays a 0% real rate of interest after tax. We recognize this is a highly stylized scenario, but it’s a good starting point for figuring things out…”
      Jane is already on easy street, she doesn’t need an annuity. And calling that a “highly stylized scenario” is like lipstick on a pig.

    1. Well, I don’t have an FT subscription, and I’ve read that article 3-4 times 😉
      You can often get around newspaper paywalls by searching for the title (in a new window/browser). Apparently they have a deal with Google to let search results in.

    1. Heh. Sharing is not endorsement 🙂
      Actually I found the concept that a lot of ‘automation’ is just pushing the labour onto the customer really interesting.
      We can see it a lot in Japan, in gas stations, supermarkets, etc. Gave me a new filter to look at automation ‘advances’: is this really automating the work, or just moving it?

  5. yeah that’s the main point I found interesting. In many cases I don’t mind at all, particularly if it can bring down costs (eg bagging your own groceries – something that we’ve always done ourselves in the UK – I always thought it to be quite pointless to employ people to do this).
    Other things don’t actually decrease the total amount of work done at all. Thankfully I’ve stopped having to do this, but applying for jobs used to be a case of sending a CV and covering letter, after tailoring both to the job a little. In recent years it became massively time consuming – each applicant having to faff about copying and pasting parts of their CV into relevant fields on an online application form. Takes many times longer, and multiplied by the number of applicants, the total number of man-hours spent is enormous. All to save the empoyer a few minutes looking through CVs (though still probably looking through the same info in a slightly different format after a few searches).
    Lots of example of this kind of nonsense online. Recently tried to book at Sushiro, as the one near us is usually too busy. Rather than just calling, they expected me to download an app, and then register all my personal details. As if anyone wants to do all that just to book a table. Naturally I went elsewhere.