Yesterday, my wife went down to the bank to deposit a year's worth of loose
change. We had over 200,000 yen for our savings, and about 50,000 yen for
the sprog's college account.

This got me to thinking about how we save money. In addition to our "loose
change savings plan," my wife saves 1,000 yen per day, in a separate bank
account set up for that purpose. She also has one of those "buy gold" plans,
where she pays a set amount each month to purchase whatever amount of gold
that will buy. She also puts a set amount into the sprog's college fund each
month. She has several other schemes on top of that, in addition to at least
two "hesokuri" (I know of their existence because we resorted to them rather
frequently when we were poor, and I also inadvertently discovered one of
them a couple of years ago while going through some old papers).

Out of all these little programs, not one earns any significant interest. I
have talked to her a few times about buying US savings bonds, if nothing
else for the sprog's college, since he will almost certainly be cashing them
in there. But for the average Japanese, "interest" is an utterly foreign
concept. Don't even get me started on the stock market.

One form of investment she thinks is worth it is land, and despite the crash
in land values in the 90s, enough fellow Japanese seem to share her opinion
that she is probably right.

-- 
Regards,
Ryan Ginstrom
ryang@gol.com