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.
A 47-year-old in Japan with ¥60.5M gives a range, not a number, and explains why ¥10M of it has to sit in cash. The math comes from the 2022 drawdown.
My portfolio fell from ¥60.3M to ¥58.5M while the Nikkei rose. What actually moved it, and the one thing my early-retirement plan never accounted for.
On Aug 3 my portfolio sat at ¥57.8M. On Aug 6 it hit ¥60.3M. What actually did it, and why I'm not moving my Barista FIRE date up.
I started at 90% cash with ¥20M ($133K). Eight years on I'm at 15%. Why I stopped chasing a ratio and started defending a fixed amount instead.
Kioxia ran roughly 75x from IPO on the AI-memory boom. But that's a low-to-high figure. Why entry, exit and size decide your real return, not the headline.
My portfolio touches ¥59M, then slides back to ¥58M without crossing ¥60M. Why a bigger portfolio moves $4,000+ a day, and why I changed nothing.