RetireJapan

I may be able to help here as I just called them 2 weeks ago to ask about a similar situation. I was enquiring about transferring money directly from a Canadian bank to IBKR and then investing in eMaxis (index fund). It is possible to do this but not in Canadian currency. I believe they only suppor...

Thank you all for your replies and suggestions. Very helpful. As I suspected, I won’t meet any of the standard criteria and I imagine the only UK Unis that might consider my daughter’s case would be the less popular/successful ones. She’s never lived in the UK at any point, never mind studying ther...

Dear All, I have a smallish amount of cash savings in the UK. I was considering opening a brokerage account and transferring the cash into a mutual index fund or similar. Although one option would be to transfer the cash to Japan than invest in one of the Japanese brokerages (Monex, SBI etc) I am al...

You can stay out for up to 5 years if you get the right re-entry permit and intend to come back. Here's a discussion about it on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/japanresidents ... ?rdt=58119 I wonder if NISA or anything else would be affected? Probably not? Many thanks for the reply. So, as I unde...

If you live in the UK for 6 months (actually 183 days) or more then the increased pension will continue to be paid when you move back to Japan. It will be frozen at the new amount thereafter, until you repeat the process. A related question is how long would you need to spend in Japan to hold on to...

I am a little surprised to read that people had to list the guarantor as a co-owner! How does that work exactly - does that mean you could get to the end of paying off a 25 year old mortgage all by yourself but still only part-own the property ? Can the `co-owner' decide to sell the property while y...

We bought our house “as seen” when the selling party didn’t want any responsibility for defects after signing. This is how all transactions for used homes work in the UK so it didn’t bother me but apparently it’s a bit unusual here. I used it to knock another 5 million off the price so turned out o...

Dear Yamede, I agree with what other posters are advising you, i.e. that the JA bank NISA does not seem like a good deal. The three names- Rakuten, Monex, SBI - mentioned here are probably better bets. If you open a SBI Shinsei account, and use it to then open a Monex account you can get some extra ...

Dear Moneymatters,
Many thanks, - your reference looks very much like it will shorten my list of questions.
Best wishes!

There are plenty of sites, books, and even magazines for property buyers in Japanese. I don't know of any in English. Have a vague plan to write a RetireJapan Guide to buying your home in Japan eventually, but I'm not sure when that will be Hi Ben, Thanks for the reply - yes, it was the sort of int...