2016 in Review

Celebrity deaths and political upsets aside… 2016 was actually pretty decent, at least for RetireJapan. ​I love the end of the year. I tend to have a few days off, and enjoy using the time to go over the year that is ending and look ahead to the coming year. This will be the first […]

Personal Finance for Beginners IV

Start in your 50s… The fourth and final part of our new series here at RetireJapan. Over four weeks we’ve looked at personal finance for people in their twenties, their thirties, their forties, and their fifties. Actually, Ben Carson over at A Wealth of Common Sense wrote a fantastic post on this topic last week. Go and read it now […]

NISA Progress Report

This one I’m much less proud of… After our Junior NISA and THEO progress reports, today we take a look at my NISA account. I opened my NISA account with Rakuten Securities in 2014, so this was my third year using the service. I’m not particularly satisfied with how I have done, because I am […]

2016 Roundup III (Sep-Dec)

The madness continues ​This is the third and final roundup post for 2016. You can see the first one here and the second one here. Today’s post includes posts from September to December. ​I’ve really enjoyed going back and reading all the posts from this year, trying to figure out which ones to include and […]

Personal Finance for Beginners III

Starting in your 40s? Still not too late The third in our new series here at RetireJapan. Over four weeks we’ll be looking at personal finance for people in their twenties, their thirties, their forties, and their fifties. If you’re the wrong age for today’s post feel free to read along anyway -you can chime in and correct my mistakes […]

THEO Robo-Advisor Progress Report

Spoiler alert: still very happy with it 🙂 THEO first popped onto my radar early this year. I wrote about it here, talked about opening an account here, and followed up here, here, here, and here. I’m still a big fan of the service. It is by far the best of the five robo-advisors I […]

2016 Roundup II (May to Aug)

The good stuff from the middle of the year After last week’s post highlighting the best of January to April, today we have… the best of May to August. Shocking, I know 🙂 By far my favorite posts from the mid-year are the Reader Profiles. They are exactly what this site is supposed to be […]

Personal Finance for Beginners II

Your Thirties Are Also Good The second in our new series here at RetireJapan. Over four weeks we’ll be looking at personal finance for people in their twenties, their thirties, their forties, and their fifties. If you’re the wrong age for today’s post feel free to read along anyway -you can think of what might have been or take notes […]

Furusato Nozei

This is a really stupid system Have you heard of the furusato nozei (hometown tax deduction)? I think there are three levels, like in this absolutely incredible explanation of Inception. On one level, furusato nozei allows people to decide where their local inhabitant taxes go. Instead of paying them to the city they live in, […]

2016 Roundup I (Jan-Apr)

The good stuff from earlier in the year We’ve been getting quite a few new readers recently, and it’s coming up to the end of the year, so I thought it might be good to run a series of posts looking back over some of the bigger stories here on the blog in 2016. First […]