Annuities in Japan
What is available? A reader sent me this article about an annuity product on Monday and asked for my reaction. I’m not too familiar with the annuity market here in Japan, so I thought this might be a good chance to take a look at what an annuity is, how to think about them, and […]
400 Posts
Actually, Monday’s post was #400 I meant to write this on Monday, but instead had to call the market correction/crash 😉 As a quick follow-up to that post, I’ve read optimistic and pessimistic articles about the stock market. Bear in mind that no-one knows what is going to happen. If they did, they certainly wouldn’t be […]
Property Tax in Japan
I owe how much now? I received the postcard with my property taxes for this year last week. I paid them for the first time last year after we bought our manshon. Unfortunately I lost the postcard from last year, but the payments seem to be the same as this year. According to this website, […]
Death Tax and Wealth Tax in Japan
Be afraid, be very afraid I was looking for the breakdown of inheritance tax rates in Japan the other day, and stumbled on an interesting news story from 2016.Basically it’s a rumour that the government was considering a couple of new taxes: a ‘death tax’ and a ‘savings tax’. The death tax (死亡消費税) would be […]
15 Financial Goals to Hit
How many did you get? I read this post by J Money last year, and thought it would be a good fit for RetireJapan too. So here are the goals, adapted for Japan 🙂 15 Goals to Hit On Your Way to Financial Freedom Not all of these are necessary, or even desirable. It will depend […]
Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency
Probably don’t go there So if you had bought Bitcoin in 2011 instead of going out for beer and ramen, you’d be a dollar multi-millionaire now. D’oh. In December I did something stupid that I specifically said I wouldn’t do, and predictably it blew up in my face. I’m sharing the story here to provide […]
Memento Mori
All things must pass I really like the popular version of memento mori. It claims the saying comes from ancient Rome, where victorious generals would be granted the right for a victory parade, and there, at the very moment of their complete triumph they would employ a slave to stand behind them and whisper ‘memento […]
NISA Progress 2017
More of the same You can see last year’s NISA progress report here, and the Junior NISA one here. From this year I will combine both into one post. This is my fourth year using NISA, which means that the investments I bought in year one will come out of the NISA wrapper at the […]
2017 Roundup: May to August
A lack of quality control? Last year we ran Roundup posts: for Jan-Apr 2016, May-Aug 2016, and Sep-Dec 2016. The idea is just to highlight the better or more perennial posts that new readers may have missed and old-timers may want to re-read. Last week we ran the first Roundup post for 2017: January to April. Today we’ll take a look […]
iDeCo in English
What are you waiting for? iDeCo is probably the best investment option for almost everyone who is planning to stay in Japan until retirement. It gives you a decent tax break, tax-free investing, and a mostly tax-free payout at the end. It forces you to invest regularly over the long term and doesn’t let you touch […]