RetireJapan

thanks to this forum my wife and i are planning to setup the ideco and then on to the nisa..
however,i wanted to hear peoples advice on what to do with a lump sum(around 60-70,000$) in my acct in japan..can anyone advise a good way to go about investing this??

You can make lump sum investments in your nisa up to the limit(though that depends on the nisa type... if it's the tsumitate nisa I don't believe you can). If you're using the old nisa type, fill that up to your allowance first.

As to when to invest, the theory says that sooner is better on average(time in the market beats timing the market etc), but that dollar cost averaging(a bit at a time) is lower risk(you distribute your investments over a period of time smoothing out any big dips or jumps, avoiding the pain of "oh I just put all my money in right before it crashed")

What to invest in? That's a complex question but a reasonably safe answer that takes out most of the risk is broad indexes. Exactly how to mix them is a personal preference, but something like an all countries index is pretty foolproof, though mixing your own might be a little bit cheaper. And if you want extra stability you *can* put in a small portion of bonds though a lot of people are forgoing that entirely(the theory is that it acts as a stabilizing agent on your portfolio and coupled with rebalancing regularly can give good gains with lower risk. But if you have a long time in the market ahead of you you can maybe afford to take the risk and not have any bonds)

Don't forget to keep 3-6 months of living expenses in cash as an emergency fund.

thanks all-is this something i should being going thru rakuten etc for?

bryanc wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 8:24 am thanks all-is this something i should being going thru rakuten etc for?

Yes. When you set up your NISA you'll also have a regular brokerage account opened for you. Stick the money in there.

When I'm buying something with my last chunk of investible cash, it always feels like a lump sum...

Bear in mind that if you invest in yen, it'll cost you ¥17,500 to convert that $70k to yen on Rakuten.

If you do it with an SBI Net Bank account, it costs ¥2,800.

Or you could convert to JPY some other way. Or just send the USD directly and buy US ETFs with it.