RetireJapan

Are you sure you’ll lose money on your purchase? Houses do depreciate in value here, but typically land doesn’t. I’d suspect the value of your 32 year old house is already zero yen or close to it? We also purchased an old house, in 2014 it was 31 years old and it was clear the house was “worthless” ...

Yes, she would be financially secure if I passed away tomorrow. Insurance is a waste of money in some circumstances, very happy to have invested the premiums we would have wasted on house, travel, life insurance over the years and built up assets we control.

Tsumitate Wrestler wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 1:29 am]

Someone with kids, or a non-working spouse should DEFINITELY have insurance (just not whole life).

I have both a non working spouse and children, but feel no take to take out insurance - we just have car insurance and more recently bicycle insurance.

It is more the work and stress aspect of it than the financial aspects, which can be quite minimal. If you have someone who you can leave keys with (family, friends, neighbours?) it does help a lot. When we purchased our house in Tokyo (and were living outside of Japan) my in laws used to come over ...

Nope.

Not an expert, but OP could sell everything and the re-buy the same or similar things before entering japan, which would reset their basis. Any gains/dividends after that would then be taxable, but this would sidestep any tax on previous gains. ff that is indeed tbe cost basis used for calculating ...

I’d check your assumptions about Japan not taxing capital gains on your existing assets. After you acquire permanent residency for tax purposes (not the same as PR for visa purposes, natch) I believe that when you sell down these assets to “spend down previous assets” you would be expected to pay Ja...

So sad to hear that you're going back to the UK! Thanks for all your kind advice... no idea how best to take your nest egg back intact though... maybe the best way to maintain the yen value rather than lock in the weak yen value into pounds would be to buy iShares MSCI Japan ETF (EWJ) at an online ...

So sad to hear that you're going back to the UK! Thanks for all your kind advice... no idea how best to take your nest egg back intact though... maybe the best way to maintain the yen value rather than lock in the weak yen value into pounds would be to buy iShares MSCI Japan ETF (EWJ) at an online ...

Maybe you could investigate whether it’s easier to simply do a bank transfer to your lawyer when it comes to buying the house. That way you avoid any issues with gift tax.