Let me show you around
If you are new to RetireJapan this post is for you. Perhaps you saw our article in the Japan Times? Or maybe a friend told you about the site. However you found us, welcome 🙂
This site is for you.
Specifically, it is for people living in Japan who would like to learn more about personal finance and investing.
It can be really hard to get accurate information here due to the language barrier and the way most people are wary about investing. There are a lot of sharks out there too: you have to be careful about who you trust with your money.
Here at RetireJapan we have a few core beliefs:
- Getting better at personal finance can make your life better
- The concepts of personal finance and investing are pretty simple
- By helping each other we can all benefit
- You need a basic understanding and to take responsibility for your finances
Personal finance is like a superpower: getting better at it can hugely improve all aspects of your life. Imagine what life would be like if you never worried about money, if you knew you could deal with pretty much any financial problem, if you had a clear plan for a comfortable retirement.
You’d probably be able to relax and enjoy life.
The beautiful thing about improving your personal finance skills and habits is that it is not all or nothing: basically any steps you take will improve your situation, and then once you are comfortable with the change you can do something else, and so on.
So what can we do for you?
RetireJapan has a number of resources. The most important ones are:
- The blog has over 700 posts on a variety of topics. We publish two posts a week -a list of (hopefully) interesting links on Monday and an article later in the week. The easiest way to search the blog is to type retirejapan.com into Google, leave a space, then type the thing you are looking for. You can join the mailing list to get the weekly email with all the posts for the previous week.
- The forum has over 20,000 posts on a variety of topics and is a great place to ask questions. The great thing about asking on the forum is that you can get advice from a number of people. You can also get very specific advice tailored to your own situation.
- The RetireJapan Guides are ebooks about specific aspects of personal finance or investing in Japan. If you buy one you’ll get any future updates for free. You can get pretty much all of the information for free on the site, but the Guides organise and explain things a little bit more. They may save you some time.
- The reading list has recommended books in English and in Japanese. Also a list of links to sites and blogs.
- Our coaching service also offers individual advice and help. You probably don’t need it. All the information is available on the site for free in one form or another. However, some people like to have someone walk them through things and answer questions. If that is you, a coaching session or two might be useful.
And what can you do for us?
RetireJapan is a community above all, so the best thing you can do to contribute is to read our resources, ask questions or write comments, tell us if we made any mistakes, and let other people know about the site.