RetireJapan

adamu wrote: ↑Sun Nov 29, 2020 11:24 am Remember that an MBA guarantees you'll pay the tuition fees, but it doesn't guarantee you a job. It's not a free pass - you still need to get the job yourself! So I guess it depends on your confidence that you can make it worthwhile.

I suppose that's the same for all non-compulsory education though. Takes time, effort and money to learn. Opens up potential, but provides no guarantees.

I am aware of the risk but I am also a deep believer in any form of self-investment will be highly rewarded in the future. Unfortunately in certain cases, you will just have to analyze the ROI backwards.

DragonAsh wrote: ↑Mon Nov 30, 2020 10:51 am One option, you could get a graduate degree in a variety of fields from Harvard almost entirely online.

https://www.extension.harvard.edu/acade ... te-degrees

Thank you so much for looking into it. I am focusing mainly on MBA as it opens up many fields plus the network. Not sure if the online programs offer methods for connecting networks but I will look into it!

StockBeard wrote: ↑Wed Dec 02, 2020 2:43 am For the NISA I think it's up to your financial institution. some of them might ask you to close (and cash out) the account when you leave, unless you can justify that this is temporary. (and typically, provide an address in Japan - e.g. family in law - where you can be reached).

For the home, as others have suggested, it doesn't make sense to buy a house now if your plan is to leave for 2 years in the foreseeable future. Go with your abroad MBA, then *if/when* you come back, you'll have time to buy a house.

I would say that a "FIRE" style of a house loan in Japan can be long rather than a short payment period. This dramatically lowers your monthly payment and you invest the difference, which is free money considering the interest rates for house loans in Japan.

Roger that, I think NISA will be continued regardless

As for the house payment plan (if I decided to go with that earlier instead of MBA for whatever reason) then my main preference is to pay it off ASAP (Not the flat 35), even on the expense of having reduced investments during that period. As I mentioned in a reply earlier, I almost got paralyzed for something completely beyond my control and this experience and the whole hurdle dealing with employment and insurance made me quite insecure about the future...So in the unfortunate event something else happened, I want a roof above my head that I don't have to worry about paying it off for a long time.

On a separate note, I just noticed the blog in your signature, is there a news letter or a sign-up system? Would love to read more blog posts for you as you publish them.

o.elgab wrote: ↑Thu Dec 03, 2020 9:46 pm On a separate note, I just noticed the blog in your signature, is there a news letter or a sign-up system? Would love to read more blog posts for you as you publish them.

You can subscribe via RSS, the industry standard way to subscribe to blogs and other sites with frequent updates. Just put the URL into an RSS reader (Feedly seems to be popular and is what I use). Works for RetireJapan too.

Unfortunately this is going out of fashion in favour of newsletters, which allows owners to harvest email addresses, and requiring people to directly visit the site rather than read via a reader app, which allows the site to serve adds and harvest more information. Sigh. I've actually seen sites turn off / cripple RSS once they realise they had it enabled by default.

adamu wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 2:52 am You can subscribe via RSS, the industry standard way to subscribe to blogs and other sites with frequent updates. Just put the URL into an RSS reader (Feedly seems to be popular and is what I use). Works for RetireJapan too.

Unfortunately this is going out of fashion in favour of newsletters, which allows owners to harvest email addresses, and requiring people to directly visit the site rather than read via a reader app, which allows the site to serve adds and harvest more information. Sigh. I've actually seen sites turn off / cripple RSS once they realise they had it enabled by default.

Feedly looks amazing, thanks for the tip