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2015 Resolutions

6/1/2015

 

They are pretty boring, actually

Picture
Last week I sat down and did my personal annual review for 2014, and then put together goals and resolutions for 2015.

My financial goals for this year are pretty boring. Basically I feel pretty happy with the investment plan I put together last year, so this year is just a case of continuing to do the same thing.

My financial goals for 2015:

1. Max out my NISA account. This appears to still be one million yen per year, although I read that the government has decided to increase the yearly limit to 1.2 million. If that happens I will try and find the extra money to max it out. I hold dividend paying stocks in my NISA account, both US and Japanese.

2. Save up some cash for emergencies. I have decided to hold this in GBP instead of yen, and will be saving small amounts to my Shinsei bank Sterling account when I can. My eventual goal is 10,000 GBP (I have just over 1,000 now) and am hoping to save a couple of thousand this year.

3. Make some more money online, though ebooks, advertising, teaching, etc. This is something I have pretty much failed at so far, so am looking forward to getting better at this.

Er, that's it. About as interesting as watching paint dry, but I'm good with that. If your investment plan is exciting, you may well be speculating and not investing.

How about you? Do you have any goals for this year?


John Johnson
8/2/2015 19:04:37

Thank you for making this website, I enjoy reading your posts very much.

Which investment firm(s) do you use to buy stocks for your NISA? What are the transaction fees/commissions like? Do you recommend?

How do you plan on saving up GBP? Are you going to earn yen and then buy pounds through a currency broker? Do you have a preferred method for converting yen to foreign currency and vice versa?

RetireJapan link
20/3/2015 01:15:50

Hi John

I owe you an apology: I missed your comment and only found it just now. Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.

I use Rakuten Securities to buy stocks/ETFs in Japan. I like the system very much and plan to make an English language guide to the site at some point this year. The commissions are not too bad, but at $27 require you to be making fairly large trades ($1500+) in order to avoid losing too much to fees. I try to make my orders at least $2000. The only problem with Rakuten is that they only have US shares (and some other Asian markets).

I save GBP in my Shinsei bank account. Shinsei provides a multi-currency account so you can move money between currencies online within your account. I really like them too.

Hope that helps! Please let me know if there is anything else I can help with :)


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    Ben Tanaka is a teacher living in Sendai, Japan.

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