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Explaining compound interest to Japanese friends in their 20s

Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2018 7:39 am
by adamu
I have a few Japanese friends in their 20s, and occasionally mention investing and at least try to get them to set up iDeCo accounts, but it's hard enough to talk about this in English to people, let alone try to be persuasive in a second language.

Does anybody know of any good resources, in Japanese, that explain simply the benefits of setting up regular investments in broad-market low-cost index funds? Preferably something that includes a realistic projection of compounding (say 3-7%). Most of the examples of compound interest I've come across are blogs that use figures like 50% or 10% to drive the point home, but this isn't realistic for a low-cost index fund. I'd like something says says "if you invest x yen every month from now and earn an average of 3% interest, you'll have XX by the time you're 70.

Trying to convince someone to make a decision to take a small sacrifice now to help their 70-year-old self isn't easy. :roll:
I've got the iDeCo book by Minako Takegawa, but asking them to read a book isn't the most persuasive approach...

Re: Explaining compound interest to Japanese friends in their 20s

Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2018 3:36 pm
by adamu

Re: Explaining compound interest to Japanese friends in their 20s

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2018 12:54 am
by jcc
That's a bit of an odd article.

It's comparing apples and oranges. Like, save up a bit and then quit working vs just keep working and don't save. And similar.

Compound interest absolutely works, if you can set aside 30,000 a month starting age 25 until 60, with a 4% real growth rate(so that's deducting inflation), you're looking at 27.5million yen at 60 instead of 12.6. If you can stretch it out from 20-65 it's 45 instead of 16.2. Over those kinds of time periods 4% is a pretty conservative number, and 30,000 a month is doable even on a starting salary. A lot of these people live with their parents s till and should be able to save a lot more.