Why our course might be the key to you unlocking tens or hundreds of millions of yen
I started RetireJapan in 2013 to help people learn about personal finance. A friend of mine had been telling me about the investments his ‘financial advisor’ had sold him.
It was the usual overseas insurance policy offshore pension rubbish with high fees and high commissions for the ‘advisors’ that sell them. The returns tend to be pretty feeble too, as the fees and commissions take a huge bite.
I was so angry I went home, registered the retirejapan domain, and wrote the first blog post that same day.
And that has been great. RetireJapan has helped me learn far more than anyone else (they say the best way to learn something is to try to teach it to someone else, and they are right), it has given me the chance to meet hundreds of people, the privilege of being a part of our fantastic community, and it has helped thousands of people improve their finances.
Most people can watch some of our videos, read some blog posts or articles, jump on the forum and ask some questions, and that will be enough.
Others need a bit more help.
A few years ago I started doing coaching online. That allowed me to work with people one on one, answering their questions and seeing their problems. A lot of them were stuck because they didn’t feel confident enough to start. Personal finance, and especially investing, can seem daunting enough in our own language. Throw in a language barrier (not just Japanese, but financial Japanese!) and daunting becomes impossible.
Often a one hour session online was enough to address those concerns and allow them to take the first step.
But one on one coaching is expensive and doesn’t scale well.
For many years I had been thinking about doing some kind of course, but only after the pandemic and the shift to online learning and meetings did it come together.
In 2022 we ran the first cohort of Your First Ten Million Yen with a small test group.
It was really fun, went well, and people seemed to get a lot out of it.
So we did it again in 2023.
For the second cohort we had a bigger group, and I got help in the form of my co-host Jon Gorham. He’s a university teacher in Tokyo, and a certified financial educator with a strong interest in personal finance. Having Jon on board was great, as he brings some things to the table I lack: he likes tracking spending (I hate it), he’s American, and he’s younger than me and not quite as far along on his financial journey.
Having a co-host for the second cohort was a game changer, so I asked Jon to help with cohort three in early 2024.
For the third cohort we made some big changes/improvements. We changed from live delivery to a hybrid course, with most of the content available online on demand via videos, articles, and workbooks, alongside a weekly online check in session to review and answer questions.
To help with that we got a content manager to crack the whip and make sure I got all the materials finished and an online delivery platform.
We also invited all the participants from cohorts one and two to join the online learning community. As far as I am concerned, people who have been through our course are always going to be our members, even years after they took the course.
Now we are about to open up the fourth cohort.
We’ll keep the online learning platform, and Jon will again be co-hosting.
We’re both really looking forward to helping a new group get their finances in order.
Who is the Your First Ten Million Yen course for?
Well, it is not for people who already have a handle on their finances. If you are saving and investing regularly, if you have a NISA account, possibly an iDeCo account, if you have a plan to fund your retirement, if you understand nenkin and insurance here in Japan you definitely don’t need to take the Your First Ten Million Yen course.
It’s also not for people who can’t afford it. If you are struggling to save money, if you find yourself getting behind with the bills or having to borrow money to get by this course is not for you. Instead come and post on the forum for free, there should be some things you can do to get to a better situation.
But if you can afford it, if you have a few hours per week free during November to learn the basics, and if you actually take action and implement one or two things you learn on the course, your investment in the course should pay off at least a few hundred fold over your lifetime.
The name comes from the initial goal of saving and investing your way to ten million yen. We chose ten million because it is substantial enough to potentially change your life, but not so big as to be out of reach.
Some of the participants from previous cohorts have already reached ten million. Others are on their way.
Once you have the knowledge and the habits necessary to reach ten million, you will find it easy to reach twenty, fifty, a hundred million and beyond.
What is in the course?
It’s basically a crash course on personal finance. We do one module a week, and it would take about half an hour a day to go through all the material. Of course, you don’t need to go through everything immediately and can just pick out the topics that interest you the most. Once a week on Sunday evenings we’ll go through and do a group class online to review the week and answer any questions.
Week 1: the principles of personal finance
Week 2: the principles of investing
Week 3: investing in Japan
Week 4: personal finance in Japan
Week 5: financial planning
There is a pre-course module to get you warmed up, and a post-course module to help you focus on implementing what you learned in the course.
And of course you get lifetime access to the materials and any future upgrades.
If you are interested in joining us for cohort four next month, sign up to our waiting list here to get more information and priority access. No obligation to buy, and you can easily unsubscribe anytime.
And if you don’t need the course but know someone who might, please forward this post to them. They will probably thank you a couple of years down the line.
Interested, but also frustrated that there is no indication of how much the course will cost. Or have I just missed it?
Hi John
Completely understand the frustration! We try to keep the course off our public channels and only send information to people who are at least somewhat interested. If you join the mailing list we’ll be opening up sales at the end of this week. You can easily unsubscribe if it ends up being something you’re not interested in.