Monthly Financial Snapshot: February 2024

Another month of 2024 in the bag.

Weather is starting to warm up here, but with that comes cedar pollen, and with that comes my allergies. I’ve been on a sublingual immunotherapy treatment for the past 9 months, but it appears to not be completely effective at preventing my symptoms, at least so far. Until the pollination season passes in about a month or two, I try to avoid going outside too much and need to hang my laundry indoors. It’s one of the more annoying aspects of living in Japan, and I wish there was more effort to deal with the problem, but there’s not a whole lot that can be done about it at this point. The best time to cut down trees was 50 years ago.

Finance-wise, things have been going well this year. The Japanese stock market is on a tear, already up about 20% (in JPY terms) in 2024 and reaching an all-time high 30+ years after the asset bubble of the late 1980s. I don’t have too much specific exposure to the Japanese market in my own holdings, and the weak(ening) JPY certainly doesn’t help USD investors either. I suspect that a big driver of the high returns is the introduction of the new NISA investment vehicle, which is basically like an extra-large American Roth IRA. Compared to the old NISA, the new one has a larger annual contribution limit (3.6 million JPY, about 24,000 USD at current exchange rate), and no time limit on tax-free gains. The stereotypical Japanese saver keeps all their money in a bank account earning nothing, so this new, very generous account is probably enticing many people to invest for the first time. Of course, as an American I would have a very difficult time opening a NISA account due to the FATCA / PFIC rules which make investing outside of the US almost impossible. Land of the free! 🙄

Here’s a summary of my financial position this month:

Projected time to FI (assuming 6% growth and 4% withdrawal rate): 9 years, 5 months.