Rakuten advice (first time Ideco)

[Michel]

Hello everyone,

My Ideco application finally went through after a little over two months of waiting, but all went very smoothly and no problems whatsoever.

Now the next important step, allocating my money and I'm leaning towards 100% たわらノーロード先進国株式 for the next 10-15 years and then adding some bonds later on.

I'm targeting for growth and ready to take the risks.

Any advice against that?

Once I am able to maximize my Ideco I'll be going into NISA as well and will be allocating differently (some emerging maybe, REIT probably, international bonds ...) But for now 100% stocks tawara no load seems like a decent plan for my Ideco.

[RetireJapan]

Which broker is your account with?

[Michel]

Sorry I only put it in the subject, I should have wrote it again in my post.
I'm with rakuten.

[RetireJapan]

Argh, sorry about that (reading fail).

I find this site makes it easy to check the lineup for iDeCo: https://www.dcnenkin.jp/search/product. ... &item=774A

I don't see anything wrong with your plan. My family also pretty much only has stocks in our portfolio at the moment (we'll transition to include more bonds later if all goes to plan).

That fund is one of the cheapest on Rakuten, and doesn't have the tax issues that the Vanguard tie-ups do.

Anyone else?

[Michel]

Yes, my thoughts as well, cheaper and better than VT in terms of taxes (from my little understanding).

The only thing I could add is 10% emerging stocks, other than that it seems to be sensible enough to me.

[Kanto]

Yes, my thoughts as well, cheaper and better than VT in terms of taxes (from my little understanding).

The only thing I could add is 10% emerging stocks, other than that it seems to be sensible enough to me.

That is the rub though. The only Emerging market options have incredibly high fees.

https://www.dcnenkin.jp/search/product. ... e=02311084

Which is why I ended up just going with VT.

[adamu]

You can't buy VT in a Rakuten iDeCo, you can only buy VT resold by Rakuten for twice the price and unclear tax handling.

The Tarawa fund looks fine if you're happy to be focussed on Developed countries for the time being. You can always adjust later.

[Kanto]

You can't buy VT in a Rakuten iDeCo, you can only buy VT resold by Rakuten for twice the price and unclear tax handling.

The Tarawa fund looks fine if you're happy to be focussed on Developed countries for the time being. You can always adjust later.

You truly dislike this fund!

This makes me nervous, as most of my iDeco is going towards it!

I read through a lot of the discussion on this site, and there is a lot of back and forth and not too much general consensus.

1. Assuming someone is with Rakuten, and wants global exposure, isn`t the VT wrap still the best option?

2. Are you advocating a switch to SBI in order to access Emaxis Slim in Ideco?

3. Assuming I cannot open an SBI account, and I want low cost global exposure in my iDeco with Rakuten what are the better options?
https://www.dcnenkin.jp/search/product. ... &item=774A

Sorry Michel, hopefully, these questions help us both and you do not see this as a hijack.

[Michel]

You can't buy VT in a Rakuten iDeCo, you can only buy VT resold by Rakuten for twice the price and unclear tax handling.

The Tarawa fund looks fine if you're happy to be focussed on Developed countries for the time being. You can always adjust later.

You truly dislike this fund!

This makes me nervous, as most of my iDeco is going towards it!

I read through a lot of the discussion on this site, and there is a lot of back and forth and not too much general consensus.

1. Assuming someone is with Rakuten, and wants global exposure, isn`t the VT wrap still the best option?

2. Are you advocating a switch to SBI in order to access Emaxis Slim in Ideco?

3. Assuming I cannot open an SBI account, and I want low cost global exposure in my iDeco with Rakuten what are the better options?
https://www.dcnenkin.jp/search/product. ... &item=774A

Sorry Michel, hopefully, these questions help us both and you do not see this as a hijack.

By all means, ask away!
I am now deciding on what to take and I am also looking for a low cost and global exposure which to me tawara seemed to fit.

[adamu]

You truly dislike this fund!

Yep. Maybe I'm being irrational, but I really don't like that they are simply wrapping up Vanguard and charging so much for the privilege. Vanguard is built on the whole philosophy that it's 1) Owned by the investors, 2) Run in the investors interest and 3) as low cost as possible. And here is Rakuten using Vanguard's name to act completely in their own interest, and offer a fund that is more expensive than it needs to be. You may as well just buy VT directly - except you can't because iDeCo only allows you to buy Japanese funds, hence the opportunity for Rakuten with this fund.

However, maybe I should stop complaining, because I could be wrong and it probably is a fine investment for most people. Just something about the fundamentals of it makes me uneasy.

1. Assuming someone is with Rakuten, and wants global exposure, isn`t the VT wrap still the best option?

To be honest I didn't look in detail at the funds available with Rakuten. It probably is, unless you can replicate it with a mix of cheaper funds.

2. Are you advocating a switch to SBI in order to access Emaxis Slim in Ideco?

No. In fact, SBI has the same problem. The eMaxis Slim All Country fund is also not available for SBI. They push their own "Global" fund, that is just wrapping up US-listed Schwab ETFs. Maybe I'm just bad at reading the prospectuses, but I can't find any information about how they handle taxation. But mostly it's more just distaste for reselling an ETF with a huge markup.

For my SBI iDeCo, I stopped buying SBI's global fund once I realised how it was constructed, and instead mix 3 eMaxis Slim funds that are available (developed ex Japan/emerging/topix) to roughly approximate the eMaxis Slim All Country fund. It actually works out slightly cheaper than All Country this way, but I'll need to rebalance them occasionally.

I recently discovered that Monex does have the eMaxis Slim All Country fund available in the iDeCo. So that looks like the best one to go for. I considered moving to Monex myself, but moving seems risky and I think my current setup is sensible enough, so decided against it.

The reason I like eMaxis Slim is because they have actually built their own innovative fund, they're not just lazily reselling an American ETF. However, while this sounds nice in theory, what will be interesting is to see performance comparisons between eMaxis Slim / Rakuten / SBI's global funds, and how they compare to their underlying index, once they've been running for a reasonable amount of time.