RetireJapan

Bubblegun wrote: ↑Tue Apr 19, 2022 2:42 pm I am going to transfer my pounds into yen soon. I have no idea where the yen will go, but months ago 1 pound was buying about 145 ish yen, and today I can buy about 167 ish yen for the same pound. I have set an automatic alarm on Wise. That if a pound reaches 170, It'll notify me, but I really have no idea what the pound and yen yen level will be.
From what I read somewhere in the wild world of the internet, if the BoE increases its interest rates, the pound will strengthen against the yen. So frankly ( whoever frank is) I have know idea when I'll buy the yen, but I know I will be soon, if we decide to buy a house. At the moment, I can only just watch the pips.

I feel like buying yen makes sense, but like you I am not sure what I would do with the yen (and no house purchase planned). So I guess either buy J-stocks/indexes and/or just wait for the yen to rebound, take the FX gain and buy USD.

You mentioned using Wise. Are your GBP in the UK or in Japan?
I looked into switching some funds Stateside from USD to JPY, but they wanted me to open an futures account which is more effort than I want to put in. My bank did have a foreign currency exchange system in the past and that allowed us to invest in stocks listed on foreign exchanges, but that vanished years ago.

Sorry, just a footnote to the recent distributing vs accumulating discussion. I've uploaded the spreadsheet to Google Drive, here is the link if anyone is interested. I don't do that often, so please let me know if you can't access or download it.

I've noticed that if you decrease the accumulating yield by just 1% then the distributing one comes out ahead (all else being equal). Since the reason for considering a distributing ETF was due to the high-yield, this for me does not make it as clear cut as some might think. Particularly since I'll be retired in ten years and in "distributing mode". If anything it highlights the importance of doing your own due diligence on any investments you make, running the numbers for your own personal situation, then committing to it knowing that you did the best you could. You'll still need luck for it to work out, so don't worry about it much after you've started

TJKansai wrote: ↑Tue Apr 19, 2022 10:35 am I wasn't keen on solar as we too are not south facing, but after a bit of research it seems E-W is not too bad.

Thanks, I'll check that out. A couple of decent e-bikes are also on the list. Not much of a financial investment but if they get us out more then it will be a good health and lifestyle investment

I'm also considering exchanging GBP. 170 is too good to be true. Danske is predicting it at 159 in 3 months and 149 in 12 months. They don't really know of course, but like any bank they have a lot of high-paid analysts working it out so I like to hear what they say.

I have some savings in NS&I premium bonds which currently pay just over 1% interest (if you're lucky). That will surely go up when the bank rate rises, but by how much, and when? Is it worth waiting? Hmm... 170 is very tempting!

TJKansai wrote: ↑Wed Apr 20, 2022 4:06 am You mentioned using Wise. Are your GBP in the UK or in Japan?
I looked into switching some funds Stateside from USD to JPY, but they wanted me to open an futures account which is more effort than I want to put in. My bank did have a foreign currency exchange system in the past and that allowed us to invest in stocks listed on foreign exchanges, but that vanished years ago.

I'm in Japan, but I use a wise account in the UK, to then transfer the money to Japan.I think someone called it "virtual account".
Here.
https://wise.com/jp/multi-currency-acco ... ankdetails

Bubblegun wrote: ↑Thu Apr 21, 2022 3:13 pm

TJKansai wrote: ↑Wed Apr 20, 2022 4:06 am You mentioned using Wise. Are your GBP in the UK or in Japan?
I looked into switching some funds Stateside from USD to JPY, but they wanted me to open an futures account which is more effort than I want to put in. My bank did have a foreign currency exchange system in the past and that allowed us to invest in stocks listed on foreign exchanges, but that vanished years ago.

I'm in Japan, but I use a wise account in the UK, to then transfer the money to Japan.I think someone called it "virtual account".
Here.
https://wise.com/jp/multi-currency-acco ... ankdetails

I go online and transfer my money from my usual UK account and send it to my wise UK account, then I can convert to yen and send it to my Japanese account.