Toranoko

[Aussieman]

Hello is anybody a Toranoko user?
Seems like a great concept. Very Japanese heavy tho.
Many point ties and you convert the points into money to invest into the stock market.
https://toranoko.com/

Thoughts?

[RetireJapan]

I looked at this, as it seemed interesting. But the fees!

[Aussieman]

My co-worker explained that her nananco points well and truly cover the monthly fee. Of 216 yen a month. (?)
I think that's the correct amount.
What were your thoughts Ben?

[captainspoke]

...
https://toranoko.com/

Towards the bottom of that page there's a graph. It shows that for ¥2,000,000 your fees would be ¥9,600/year. For my math brain that seems to be 0.48%/year. And I guess the ¥300/month is included in that ¥9,600? (If not, then 9,600 + 3,600 = ¥13,200. Which would be just over 0.65%/yr.)

There are very likely fees for the funds within their fund-of-funds collections. Scroll down two screens or so and the list is here: https://toranoko.com/stocked/funds.html That palette looks good (lots of vanguard), but each of those funds/ETFs has its own fee structure. While toranoko likely gets vanguard's institutional/admiral rate, overall it might be another 0.1%. A couple few in there are higher, I think the fee for IAU is 0.25%, and GLD is 0.4% (on the US market, and I have no idea why they'd include two gold funds that are similar). If it all averages out to 0.1% for those funds, that's okay, but on the other hand, that's an unspoken-of extra.

[RetireJapan]

That's better than I remember. I may be confusing it with another app/service though.

300 yen a month + 0.3% + fund fees.

The best alternative would be to buy mutual funds through a low-cost broker and just pay the fund fees, but it's not too bad and as a 'set and forget' easy option it's a lot better than doing nothing