The Monday Read
Happy New Year! Well, that is the end of 2018. How was it for you? Personally it was a very mixed year (a ‘calamitous year‘ according to Japanese tradition) but not all bad. I’ll be doing my annual review today and thinking about the new year ahead tomorrow. Patrick Sherriff (Our Man in Abiko) is […]
RetireJapan Progress 2018
Pretty good year Every year since 2013 I have done a personal annual review. I really recommend it. I basically just sit down for a couple of hours and list up what I accomplished this year. What went well? What didn’t go so well? Then in January sit down and set out some goals and […]
The Monday Read
Merry Christmas from RetireJapan Merry Christmas! I’ll be cooking Xmas dinner all day today (we eat on Christmas Eve, Spanish style) so rushing to get this out on Sunday evening. Here are this week’s links: Is your spending under control? It’s the Spending, Stupid Executive salaries in Japan: Carlos Ghosn’s arrest spurs debate on executive […]
Other Progress 2018
Bit of a mixed year This is the last progress report, and contains everything else. In a way NISA and iDeCo are easy, because they are a bit of a no-brainer and can be set up and basically ignored after that. Figuring out what else to do is more challenging. This year I did mainly […]
Giving Progress 2018
Start now There are basically two schools of thought regarding giving money away. One says that you should wait until you are rich/comfortable, at which point you will be able to give away more money. The other says that if you don’t give money away when you only have a little, you won’t do so […]
iDeCo Progress 2018
Slow and steady iDeCo is a retirement account (like a US 401k) that locks up your money until you are sixty years old. In exchange, you get to invest pre-tax income (which reduces your income taxes) and won’t get taxed on your investments while they are in the account. When you eventually cash out you […]
NISA Progress 2018
The slow steady grind A NISA account is a way to invest without paying capital gains tax or taxes on dividends. Pretty much anyone who lives in Japan can open one. For more information, check out our Beginner’s Guide to NISA Accounts in Japan. Every year I write a progress report so you can follow […]
The Monday Read
Getting used to the new site Writing this in WordPress instead of Weebly Well, we’re settling into our new home. Finding a lot of little things to fix so give us until next week and then if you notice anything after that please let us know 🙂 Here are this week’s links: I should start […]
RetireJapan 2.0
Website is coming I love the new website. I hope you will too.We are (finally) launching the new RetireJapan site tomorrow. We’re going to be moving to retirejapan.com and the site will look a lot prettier. I’m told it should be easier for people to find it by searching, and it will be https so […]
The Monday Read
From the SilverKris Lounge in Changi Airport Pretty disappointing lounge actuallyWell, I am trying to write this in the very crowded and not very good Singapore Airlines lounge in Changi Airport. This is supposedly their flagship lounge. I think they should consider investing a bit more money in it 🙂 Here are this week’s links, […]