About me

I'm Nasutame（成為）. I want to be financially independent and semi-retired as soon as possible. I'm now around 40, and the time when I can be confident almost all my expenses should be covered by my asset and income without earning money through full time job.

Here I would like to talk a bit about me.

When I started to work

I started my first work when I was 14, a junior-high student. I delivered newspapers to around 50 houses in the early morning and got paid at around JPY 15,000 (USD 150) a month. It took about 45 minutes to get all the newspapers from the warehouse and deliver to each customer. I had only one day-off a month! But the payment was not bad for teenager, and I kept working until I started to study hard for entering university when I was 18.

I lived better off in my university days

I experienced various part-time jobs in my university days. Though I had to work quite a lot because of financial budget, but I really enjoyed working (not always, of course) without heavy responsibility against others. The wage was from USD 8-12 per hour. I lived in a dorm and paid only USD 100 a month at that time for my accommodation, so with the student loan and scholarship plus the earning from these part-time jobs allowed me to live quite a good life! In addition to that, I had been already accustomed to living frugally - in SETSUYAKU way. Also I sincerely thank my university for even exempting me from paying tuition fee.

Got a full time job! and...

I got a full time job after graduation from my university in 22. I was shocked literally from the very 1st day of the work - no one of the colleagues left work before 8 p.m. Almost all of them kept working till 10-11 p.m.! Though I had nothing particular to do (on the 1st day of new graduate it maybe not strange), my boss told me to stay till the end! Oh my dear...

The night when I came back from my first full time workplace was a mess. I told to myself: "How can I keep working here for 40 years?" The famous tradition of lifelong employment was (is?) still alive here in Japan and I was supposed to work for the company till retirement.

I suffered a light anorexia. I did not have any appetite for 3 days after starting the work. I recovered from that because I stop thinking too seriously about the fact and decided to take it granted. To be a "Japanese hard worker" is very easy, if you can stop your thinking.

OK, I worked for that company for 9 years. I confess I really enjoyed my work in my late 20's. It was very interesting and I thought I was No.1 in the field. Sometimes I overworked by 200 hours a month (which did not include usual working hours 40h/week), but still I felt obliged to work in that way. Salary was not too bad but not too good - around USD 50k when I was 30.

Turning 30 and health problem

After turning 30, the hard work affected my health. On the top of the busiest season I got a flu which got very serious. And immediately after recovery from the infection I slipped my disk, when I was taking a bath. It may seem not so serious, but these 2 accidents made me change my mind on how to live and work.

Why do I have to keep sitting in front of office PC and doing something, not sparing my own time to what I really want to do - walking in the sun, reading my favorite books, listening to music, gaming, doing sports. Yes, it's all about money.

Then I got quite a good offer from another company and I accepted it. There I work less and get paid more. This is my current company, to which I am very much thankful.

The idea of semi-retirement

Last year I got to know about early-retirement from some blogs. Of course I did know the term, but it was like beyond heaven. Only a few talented people can do that, earning millions of money by IPO or stock option or something like that - I thought like this. But they were not such extraordinary people - they had been just Japanese "salary-man" like me. Why the hell could they do that?

They are very interested in living a simple and frugal life, really enjoying to economy their daily expenses. The idea was very attractive to me.

I started to plan and analyze how I can quit my full time job and live  my own life. And now I found it actually realizable for me, if I accumulate some more asset and get used to a frugal living. It may be a little bit late that I discovered the idea of getting semi-retired and started to make asset, but it can't be too late to start.

What I want to tell in my blog

So, in this blog I want to write following themes;

-my investment: progress and milestones
-Lifestyle and work
-How to make asset for early-retirement
-The ways to make things economical
-Social system, pension and insurance

As I am Japanese, topics are mainly regarding Japanese ones. I am writing a blog in the same theme in Japanese - "一日不作一日不食 (Ichijitsu nasazareba ichijitsu kurawazu) ", that means "A day without work is a day without meal". It may sound ironical, but I interpret this phrase that I do not work, so I do not spend more money than necessary. This is my policy. This blog is mainly my own translation of my blog articles in Japanese, and I want to select only actual topics for English language readers.

Also I want to improve my writing with this new blog...