Personal Finance Blog
A Japanese salary worker's journey to 50 million yen (~$350K) in 8 years.
No flashy tricks, just steady wealth building strategies.
My friend just made $20K on Micron. Social media is full of people comparing index funds to AI funds over four-week windows. Here's why I'm not changing a thing.
A 46-year-old Tokyo salaryman walks through three stock sales from 2011 that turned into a $200K opportunity cost — and what finally fixed the pattern.
Final installment of my FP cert series. I failed the FP2 written exam once (passed the practical), then passed on retake. Bigger story: every major financial judgment I'd made over 8 years — keeping a mortgage, holding unhedged USD funds — was written into the FP2 textbook as the correct answer.
Eight years of index investing got me to ~$260K. Six weeks of FP3 study showed me that real estate and inheritance tax were total blindspots. Also: Japan's inheritance tax scares people who don't actually need to worry.
I was waking up at 4am to play games. My wife noticed and suggested I take a financial certification instead. I started studying for Japan's FP cert that day. Here's why a contrarian view of 'experience vs credentials' kicked in immediately.
A Japan-resident investor's case for unhedged USD funds: why I chose unhedged over hedged versions (fees + DCA fit), what ¥159 USD/JPY means for my ~$260K portfolio, and why I won't sell or stop contributions even if the yen strengthens.