RetireJapan

It wasn't a problem to open my SBI account with just my family name and first name written in Western letters in the main field and katakana in the furigana field. They registered my account straight away even though my middle name is listed on my IDs. It wasn't a problem to open NISA with them eith...

Most people investing through NISA do so by buying stocks, funds or ETFs. It is not limited to funds. There are basically three main programmes now (excluding Junior NISA). 1. Regular NISA 2. Tsumitate NISA, which kicks off in 2018. Investment is limited to pre-approved funds, of which there are abo...

My main issue with health insurance is that it doesn’t prevent you from getting sick..! But whether ¥60,000 is a lot or too much to pay for taking out extra insurance depends on your reference framework, especially compared to how much money you have left over to invest and how much you are currentl...

The tax free amount at time of withdrawal is calculated based on the time period someone has paid into iDeCo so it actually makes sense to start doing that as early as you can, at least by paying the minimum monthly amount into the account. I believe that the minimum amount someone has to pay into i...

While you can’t invest in ETFs directly through iDeCo, SBI offers some of its EXE-i funds through the programme. This fund lineup largely invests into Schwab and Vanguard ETFs. The charges in iDeCo for the funds are roughly between 0.3 and 0.4 percent.

There are still lots of people who want to use a car for six to twelve hours once in a while. Obviously if your main purpose is to use a car for 24 to 48 hours there will be economically better options. But I do not want to make his into a penny pinching fight and hope you don’t intend to do so eith...

Times Car Share services are everywhere in Tokyo nowadays. We tried it out a couple of years ago. The company would not charge any member fees for the first month or two at that time. The service was very smooth. Once you become a member you can make reservations for any car at any service station i...

Yes, but you can’t change boxes during the year, and you’d get 12 million investable allowance if you’d take the NISA box five years and the Tsumitate NISA box 15 years after.

Look at it like this: the scheme offers investors two different types of boxes, a NISA or a Tsumitate NISA box. Investors can only choose one of the boxes each year.

Yields on many bonds are very low. If you really want to invest in bonds, then you could do that by investing in a global index bond fund, which should split your investment across long- and short-dated securities of developed countries.