RetireJapan

I am in the situation that I would not have paid in the full amount into nenkin when I retire (so I won't get the full amount)
that's ok ...... but the sticky point is ...... if my wife dies before me (she is Japanese and would get the full amount) I will be left with not enough!

I have taken out life insurance (for her) in my country but the fee seems quite high (about 10% of the total cost) and the total premium seems to go up about 5 to 8% every single year!
that got me thinking of whether it would be better to cancel that and get some life insurance for her here in Japan?? after all we will be in Japan
(I am talking about 10,000,000 yen)

any ideas?

many thanks

Check out some plans here: https://hoken.kakaku.com/insurance/gla/

I would avoid insurance with an investment component and just stick to term life insurance. Once you have a baseline of how much it should cost, you could also talk to a local agent.

Good luck!

thanks for that

Roger101, you haven't clarified, but is your wife working? Life insurance is used to offset loss of income.
If she is working, you may want some insurance to offset the of her income if she dies.

If she's not working you wouldn't be losing any income, and spending money for life insurance to cover non-existent income isn't...optimal.
If she sadly passes away while still relatively young, you can still work and in any event an extra Y10,000,000 would be almost meaningless if you still have like 20-30 years to cover. And if she is older, life insurance would be awfully expensive.

If your wife has been working and passes away and you're over the age of 55, you would be eligible to receive a portion of the nenkin she would have received.

Wouldn't really lean on using life insurance on your spouse as a retirement savings plan...

Obviously all of the above is irrelevant if you'd be losing income and/or have young kids etc. (although here as well, survivor benefits for husbands are reasonably robust if the wife dies with kids under the age of 18).