category: progress-reports

This month I decided to try getting more organized with tracking finances. Up until now, I have been using Mint to track my financial transactions through my US bank accounts and credit cards. It’s been working well for me for over a decade, but the product itself is pretty stagnant and hasn’t advanced much over the years. I can’t really complain since it’s a free service and does all the basics of what I need it to do, but the fact that it doesn’t work with non-US accounts is a bit of a problem since I live in Japan....

I made a slight change to my investment strategy this month by changing my US small-cap value fund from Vanguard’s fund tracking the CRSP SCV index (VSIAX) to the more focused Avantis SCV ETF (AVUV). It’s an actively-managed fund (gasp!) but the expense ratio is really low which mitigates the principal downside of active funds. It is more focused than VSIAX due to applying more stringent value and profitability screens, so in theory one should expect better risk-adjusted performance due to greater exposure to the value and profitability factors....

As hinted in last month’s post, I have decided to change jobs (again!). When I start my new job in July, this will mark the 4th company that I’ve worked for in Japan in less than two years. Since moving to Japan, my work history has been much more turbulent than I intended, mostly due to COVID wreaking havoc on the world economy (and completely killing off my first employer in Japan), but also due to drastic changes in business strategy from my employers, which may or may not also be in response to COVID....

I’m sorry for updating so late. It’s almost time to write my April report. So right after the March state of emergency was lifted, I went back to the office to work, only to find out a couple days later that my neighboring coworker had been exposed to a virus carrier, and he later tested positive (no symptoms) a few days after that. We all promptly returned to remote work until we could all get tested....

Not too much to write about this month. Tokyo’s state of emergency was extended by 1 month, so more work from home for me. New virus cases continue to fall, but since the vaccine has only just started rolling out (only for medical workers at this time), it will probably be at least another 5 or 6 months until things can go back to normal in Japan. Financially, the markets mostly continued to climb, with some volatility during the last week of February....

So… how about that GME? It’s not often that the market grabs so much of people’s attention that it becomes a main story in the press for so long. The last time I can remember this much attention focused on financial markets is the last major Bitcoin bubble in late 2017, and of course that one also didn’t end well (at least in the short term, as BTC is currently at over $37k as I write this…)....

Another year gone, and not a moment too soon. I ended up doing a modestly-sized Roth IRA conversion after all. Since I can claim the FEIE this year to exclude my earned income in Japan, that leaves me with some tax-free space from my standard deduction with which to do Roth conversions. I did my best to estimate my conversion amount to completely fill up the tax-free space, but I’ll find out for sure once I file my taxes in a couple months....

PC building update: I built my new computer over the first weekend of November and it’s been working great ever since then. I was able to snag a Ryzen 7 5800X on launch day, so my computer is way, way overpowered for my day-to-day use. Still, I know I would feel some amount of buyer’s remorse if I opted to buy last year’s CPU for only a slight discount (CPU prices in Japan are inflated compared to the US)....

What a surreal month it’s been. Life goes on here in Tokyo, but there’s been a lot of attention focused on the US election, as well as the resurgence in COVID-19 cases in the US and Europe. Election coverage here treats it mostly as spectacle, and doesn’t really provide much analysis or opinion. However, since the US electoral college system is so bizarre, there’s always a lot of explanation of how it works and why they need to focus the coverage on specific states....

Another month gone. Unfortunately, my laptop decided to fry itself a couple of weeks ago, so I no longer have a computer at home. I’m still deciding how to go about remedying this situation. I’m leaning toward building a desktop PC since I used my laptop at home 95% of the time, but I’m also going to attempt to pursue warranty claims on my laptop since it’s been less than 2 years since I bought it and I’m eligible to pay for extended service....