Path: ccsf.homeunix.org!ccsf.homeunix.org!news1.wakwak.com!nf1.xephion.ne.jp!onion.ish.org!gcd.org!vda-gw!newsfeed.hashimoto.gr.jp!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!nntp.gol.com!203.216.70.8.MISMATCH!not-for-mail From: "Ryan Ginstrom" Newsgroups: fj.life.in-japan Subject: How Japanese Wives Save Money Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 14:24:28 +0900 Organization: FusionGOL - Global Online Japan Lines: 29 Sender: ryang@gol.com Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: yrmfa-01p2-127.ppp11.odn.ad.jp Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-2022-jp" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: nnrp.gol.com 1105593862 30940 61.116.186.127 (13 Jan 2005 05:24:22 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@gol.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 05:24:22 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1437 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441 Xref: ccsf.homeunix.org fj.life.in-japan:24473 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