RetireJapan

I'll send some more specific figures as a private message, but as a general figure I'd say take the land and building costs on paper and add 5-10% for all the additional costs (there are a lot!).

Term life insurance is extremely affordable. I would say it is very necessary for those with children. What would happen to your child if you or your spouse passed away? Term life insurance basically helps elevate the financial side of that horrible question. Well, the remainder of our mortgage wil...

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll go ahead and apply for the account and start investing for him. Neither me nor my wife have life insurance (yet?). I'm not sure if it's worth it? Unfortunately my wife isn't keen on the idea of investing, so she prefers to keep her money in low interest savings accou...

Just as an update on this (for anyone who's interested!). We ended up going for a pre-built home built by Pansonic Homes in a "newtown" type culdesac of brand new houses. It has mostly everything we wanted and included some convenient features we probably wouldn't have chosen if we built a...

Hi all, Seeing as the Junior NISA will be finishing in 2023, I'm considering whether it's worth opening one or not for my 1 year old son. My wife and I would both like to save around 5,000 yen a month for him until he turns 18. Of course we could save the money in our own NISA allowances, but keepin...

This whole saga is very interesting, the Reddit is hilarious. I'm intrigued to see how this ends. I placed a limit order through Rakuten for a single share at $350 with some play money, let's see if it gets filled .

Don't forget about location. If you plan to have kids, you should consider buying house in the best neighborhood you can afford, with good school (public or private, depending on your plans), abundance of hoikuen (if your wife plans to go back to work) and no municipal housing in vicinity (I've see...

Thanks for the replies so far. We have a few viewings lined up at some model homes with 4 different companies over the next 3 weeks: Sekisui Haimu (Sekisui Home's little brother), Panasonic Homes and Toyota Homes (3 bigger name ones to keep the wife happy) along with Ai Koumuten (a smaller company w...

My wife and I are considering buying a house now that I have PR and we have some kids. We have a few basic ideas of what we would like; natural light, an island counter kitchen, a decent sized living room and a small garden. I'd also be interested in insulation and maybe solar panels. The problem we...

Another huge chunk off overnight it seems. I think I may actually avoid looking at rakuten this time too...