As the year winds down to a close, you might find a nice little surprise in your paycheck for December. It’s called ‘nenmatsu chousei’ — and simply is a tax payback (or payment, in some cases) carried out at the end of the year in Japanese companies for employees. While Ameri [ ... ]
A friend sent me this frantic email the other day, in a bit of frugal crisis: “I got a nasty surprise in the mail yesterday – a very, very large tax bill from a city in Saitama. It’s not even the city I live in!! What gives?” This individual recently moved from Saitama to ano [ ... ]
One very savvy reader offered the following suggestion on how to use different savings accounts to help get through tight financial spots: No matter how carefully you have planned your monthly expenditures, there are are times when an unplanned expenditure leaves you short. What I do is save term de [ ... ]
Ever come to the end of your pay period and realize you have less than 10,000 yen to live on for a week? It happens a lot in Japan, even if you’re the author of a Frugal E-zine! In our case, we had a large tax bill, several business trips, and other items that required [...] [ ... ]
Ever open up an envelope from your mail, only to discover a nasty surprise? A higher-than-expected bill, be it phone, gas, water, or electricity, is never a happy event. However, it can be an opportunity to do what I call an “internal household audit” of your monthly expenditures. Compan [ ... ]
A few weeks ago (when the weather was a bit more bearable), I introduced a rather ambitious topic: debt-proof living. After defining debt-proof living, I promised to revisit the idea with further details later. Well, the time has come. This week will be the second in a series of articles devoted to [ ... ]
The Nikkei Shinbun, Japan’s premier financial daily, reported that the percentage of ownership of Japanese stock by foreign investors (on a value basis) rose 4.1 percentage points to 21.8 percent, a record figure. This is higher than the amount held by individual investors (20.5%) and banks (5 [ ... ]
As a someone known for writing about saving money in Japan, I often get asked: what do we do with our money now that we’ve saved it? That’s an excellent question, one that the multi-billion dollar investment industry tries its hardest to answer. The options in Japan (aside from offshore [ ... ]
With the Japanese stock market slowly shaking off the poor performance of the past few years, more and more people approach me asking how to invest in stocks in Japan. For those truly considering a foray into the Japanese stock market, here are a few tips to consider that might save you money. 1) If [ ... ]
Today’s topic is achieving financial freedom after years of struggling with consumer debt. While Japan overall is not a consumer debt-driven culture to the extent that the United States or other countries (South Korea, recently) might be, many foreigners living in Japan often struggle with a h [ ... ]