The Monday Read
From Nurnberg, Germany It’s pretty hot here too 🙂 Here are this week’s links: Seems legit: six things working women should pretend they can’t do. Dentist millionaire interview. I don’t know, dude: eight questions I’ve been pondering. What is best in life? People retire early for two reasons, and neither of them is money. My […]
2017 Roundup: January to April
I don’t remember writing that 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. It’s also an easy post for us to write 😉 Earlier this […]
Transferwise Revisited
Still love it Last year we discovered Transferwise and did a big write-up on the site. That post is the most-commented on so far on the blog, and there is a wealth of information in the comments alone. Well worth a read if you need to send money from Japan to other countries. The consensus […]
International Tax Reporting
And so it begins I got a letter from <HSBC> the other day. Opened it, read it, it said they were <implementing new directives related to the OECD tax information sharing treaty>. Picture me giving a damn, I said never. ​We wrote about the OECD tax information treaty on the blog last year. It is […]
Filing a Tax Return in Japan
Almost a joy. Almost. The early 90s would like their website design back, Japan Last week I submitted a tax return for the first time in Japan. Well, I submitted a tax return myself for the first time. Last year my wife’s accountant did it for me. I’d also been in to the tax office […]
Review: UK Robo-Advisor Nutmeg
Non-residents welcome for a change Here’s another one for Brits, especially ones who are planning to move back to the UK at some point or just want to diversify their holdings a bit across currencies, countries, and companies. Nutmeg is a UK robo-advisor that is fairly unique in that they are willing to do business […]
Telephone Cold Calls
Here’s how we stop them… for good I’ve always hated telephone cold calls. Maybe there is someone out there that is just waiting for yet another company to call them with a great deal if they switch their internet provider, but I haven’t met them yet. I find it morally distasteful too, as they seem […]
MSV Life
The ‘Vanguard Robo-Advisor’ in Japan I wanted to like MSV Life, I really did. After all, it’s a collaboration between Vanguard and some Japanese firms (Monex and Saison), it has low minimum investments (just 10,000 yen to open an account) and slightly lower fees (just under 1%) than some robos in Japan, and although they […]
How’s Your Pension Doing?
If you have been paying into it, that is… Ever since 1986 it has been compulsory for people living in Japan to pay into the national pension scheme. Compulsory but not enforced. That seems to be changing, and one of the aims of the My Number system is clearly to track social security, income, and […]
Transferring Money Abroad
Could this be the one we’ve been looking for? Anyone wanting to transfer money abroad has run into the expense and hassle of traditional transfer methods. It’s time-consuming. It’s expensive. The exchange rates are terrible. The paperwork is annoying. The people in the bank don’t know how to do the transfer. You forgot to bring […]