Not sure which is the best option
Here is a prime example of how rich people get all the breaks. If you can afford to prepay your kokumin nenkin, they will give you a discount. The longer you prepay for, the bigger the discount. If you prepay the maximum 2 years' worth, you get a 15,640 yen discount.
[Marxist rant] Somehow this seems unfair to me. I understand why they are offering this discount (they can save on admin costs and get the money in advance) but a lot of people on kokumin nenkin are hurting financially and unlikely to have 400,000 yen lying around. Those that do, probably don't need the discount. [/Marxist rant]
We already prepay my wife's kokumin nenkin in six month batches (giving us a 4,480 yen discount over two years, according to the table above) using a credit card to get air miles. The question is, should be prepay the full two years?
In favour of the motion, we could pay once and then not worry about it for two years, and it's a 4% guaranteed return.
Against the motion, we have a good chance of doing better by investing the 400,000 yen and just paying kokumin nenkin every month or every six months as we do at the moment.
I suspect there is not much in it and both options are reasonable.
Personally I am inclined to prepay the full two years as this will diversify our investments somewhat and allow us to yen cost average into the stockmarket. I suspect we'll have a stock pullback/crash sometime soon and the guaranteed 4% return will look pretty good at that point.
What do you think? Which is the better option in your opinion?