pension questions..

[bryanc]

should have worked this out a long time ago,but have been cking on my nenkin payments...

1.currently pay 0 厚生年金基金 -　is this something that should be investing in?
2.is 確定拠出年金 something like ideco?
3.have paid into 厚生年金 265months but 国民年金 says zero.I understand that am paying into both but wont show how much for each(is that correct?)
can i pay the fukanenkin?

thanks!

[zeroshiki]

I don't know all the answers so I will only try to answer the ones I do know.

1. I think this was answered by RJ in another post. If you have kosei nenkin you don't get to pay this.
2. 確定拠出年金 is a company DC plan. Alot of companies have this in place of retirement money 退職金 nowadays. Its in place of iDeCo (until October 2022 when you can have both but that's a different topic). They pull from the same tax pool but the idea of the company DC plan is your company pays an amount and you can match it. Its better than iDeCo in the sense that the money put into it is your company's money (unless you match) but the negative is that they usually have worse fund options than doing iDeCo yourself.
3. Kosei nenkin and Kokumin nenkin are two versions of the same thing. You never paying kokumin nenkin means you've been employed by a private company your entire working life.

[bryanc]

many thanks- i dont really follow why i cannot pay kosei nenkin kikin if i am paying kosei nenkin as they are diff systems,but
understood.
you are correct to say that have been employed only at a private company for the purpose of the current pension,
but i was actually a public employee for first three yrs but returned to uk for a month and claimed that 3yrs then..
(wasnt expecting still to be here!)
presuming the answer is no,but can i repay the 3 yr pension payments that i took out?

[zeroshiki]

I think there's a limit to how far back you can re-pay and its definitely shorter than how long ago that was for you . And that's only for delinquents. If you removed yourself from the system voluntarily like that, I don't think there's a way to put the money back.

[beanhead]

You can pay kokumin nenkin voluntarily from 60, though, if you are not working in a position paying kosei nenkin at that point.
That will add another 5 years.

And there is the option of taking the pension later, from 68 or 70 even, which Ben has written about in the blog.
Either of these options can help increase that Japanese pension a little bit.

[RetireJapan]

And there is the option of taking the pension later, from 68 or 70 even, which Ben has written about in the blog.

Currently can delay up to 70 (and soon up to 75).

https://www.retirejapan.com/blog/when-t ... a-pension/

[beanhead]

Currently can delay up to 70 (and soon up to 75).

https://www.retirejapan.com/blog/when-t ... a-pension/

75? That's confidence! You must eat more natto and seaweed than me

[RetireJapan]

75? That's confidence! You must eat more natto and seaweed than me

We'll see how it goes, but I think the principle holds in the same way to both 70 and 75.

I may change my mind and end up writing 'Why I am taking nenkin early from age 60' in 16 years time, but probably not

[beanhead]

75? That's confidence! You must eat more natto and seaweed than me

We'll see how it goes, but I think the principle holds in the same way to both 70 and 75.

Yep, agreed. I am considering postponing it until 68 to match the UK state pension.
Of course, the governments of both countries could decide for us as well, by changing the age which we can receive the pensions.

[ClearAsMud]

75? That's confidence! You must eat more natto and seaweed than me

We'll see how it goes, but I think the principle holds in the same way to both 70 and 75.

I may change my mind and end up writing 'Why I am taking nenkin early from age 60' in 16 years time, but probably not

I seem to like making longer posts, but it’s possible to argue that there’s less to be gained by delaying your pension from age 70 to age 75 than by delaying it from age 65 to age 70. This is because when you delay your pension, you’re betting that you’ll stick around long enough to receive more money than you would have had you started taking the pension at an earlier age. In other words, your total returns over the life of your pension also become a basis for making a decision. The Japanese term for the point at which you start reaping comparative gains or incurring comparative losses as a consequence of a decision to delay or not is son-eki bunkiten (損益分岐点), the “break-even point” of a pension. Generally, the later you start taking your pension, the higher this point gets, and financial sites do advise paying attention to it.

Rough example: Let’s suppose that next April, a 65-year old man decides to delay receiving his pension until the new age of 75. The break-even point for this person would come when he is over 86 years old (a convenient table of various break-even points for an annual pension of 1,920,000 yen can be found on the following rather garish site: https://diamond.jp/articles/-/264470). The current remaining life expectancy for an average 75-year-old Japanese man is 12.41 years (15.97 years for women; 2019 figures), so death can be expected to come for him at about the age of 87-and-a-half. In other words -- and of course this ignores all the various qualifications involved -- the pensioner would be on the positive side of the ledger with respect to the total amount of pension benefits received only for about the last year and a half of his life, having delayed gratification for 10 years past his full retirement age.

Our prospective pensioner now starts wondering whether a mere year and a half of higher benefits is really worth the wait, no matter what the increase. What about the “old” pension limit of 70? For a 70-year-old, the break-even point for the same pension arrives at slightly below the age of 82. Since a 70-year-old man can currently expect to live another 15.96 years (20.21 years for women), the pensioner can expect to enjoy a relative pension surplus for four or more years after reaching the break-even point, and he will have only delayed gratification for five years. Doesn't that sound just a little bit tempting?

Granted that individual circumstances can complicate things, the choice doesn’t seem all that clear-cut to me (the difference between 60 and 65 or 70 is significantly greater). Of course, our 65-year-old prospective pensioner can put off making a final decision until later (he can always opt for the pension at 70 anyway), and even those on the borderline can take it year by year. But it is something to think about and possibly to plan for.