8 Securities and 8 Now!
Cheap but a little clunky 8 Securities is a share dealing platform originally from Hong Kong. It is cheaper than similar platforms in Japan but not as slick or easy to use. I was most interested in their robo-advisor service 8 Now! but they also have a normal share-dealing platform offering Chinese and US shares. […]
Robo-advisor THEO
Successful completion My account at THEO is now open and operating. The last few steps to open the account were: receive a phone call from THEO last week to confirm my address receive a letter in the post (to confirm account details) upload my My Number information transfer 100,000+ yen to the account Once you […]
Japan Robo-Advisor THEO
Might have potential, but only as a backup? So I mentioned new robo-advisor service Theo in my update on March 7th, but much like the fully armed battle station I didn’t realise it was already operational. I had a quick look at the site, and the system seems fairly simple. You apply to open an […]
Review: Interactive Brokers
A fallback option, but not my first choice So I wrote a teaser post about Interactive Brokers just over a week ago and promised to report back once I had opened an account. After considering a few things I decided not to go through with opening an account (details below) but I think I learned […]
And so it begins
We are all numbers now Just found this notice on the Rakuten Securities website. From next January, all stock dealing accounts must have a ‘My Number’ attached to them. This is, of course, for tax tracking purposes. I presume bank accounts will be next.
The Monday Read: Uninvited Guests
Time for a little autumn cleaning perhaps The shift in the weather caught me off guard this week. We went from AC on to “hmmm, might need a light jacket” in what seemed like minutes. Very welcome though, especially if that was the end of the humidity. Found this fine fellow in my office today. […]
The Monday Read: The Paradox of Aging
The better you get, the less time you have left I’m almost 50 (which seems completely unbelievable to me), and I recently started training jiu-jitsu again somewhat regularly. I’m a mediocre blue belt in jiu-jitsu. I foolishly started at the age of forty, and got pretty into it before I knew what I was doing, […]
The Monday Read: Hospitalised
Japanese Health Care is Accessible at Least I’ve had a bit more experience with the health care system in Japan than I would like, mainly due to my taking up jiu-jitsu at the unwise age of 40. It’s not perfect. There seem to be a lot of doctors who aren’t quite as good as you […]
Japan Pension (nenkin) Update 2024
I must be the only person in Japan who gets excited about receiving their annual nenkin statement. I got home last night and was thrilled to see that it had arrived. The Nenkin Teikibin Everyone paying into nenkin should receive an annual update, called nenkin teikibin (ねんきん定期便). This will either arrive by post, usually in […]
The Monday Read: The Past
You can go back, but it’s not the same On our last full day in the UK (we’re back in Japan now), I took the grandkids to visit my old college. It’s very ‘Harry Potter’-y and we rented one of the college punts for a couple of hours of fun on the river (messing about […]