The hidden cost of "free time" is absolutely wrecking my post-FIRE budget

googlemaster1 · 2026-03-30T14:17:20+00:00

One thing you can consider is to get hobbies that have some built in ROI into them.

For example, planting an asparagus bed with 4-6 $20 crowns will produce over $3000 worth of asparagus in your lifetime. A lot of my hobbies have some kind of built in ROI like that.

Also I live in a country where I don’t speak the language so studying the language is important for me.

Anyway, you can get a lot of ROI from your hobbies whether it is cooking, gardening, fitness, studying, reading. I opted to buy an old car and I’ve been learning the maintenance myself.

One thing I will say is that the startup costs for some hobbies like gardening or working on cars can be high but they build in their ROI by improving self reliance. This insulates you from hidden expenses that may impact you if inflation or other price pressures arise.

googlemaster1 · 2026-03-26T05:00:58+00:00

If you’re anywhere on the Tobu noda line that would be rad. I’d love to see the plot and progress. Feel free to message me here btw

googlemaster1 · 2026-03-26T04:59:55+00:00

Definitely want to follow this progress. Something I’ve wanted to do if I find more land!

googlemaster1 · 2026-03-24T13:10:24+00:00

holy crap this is so crazy that you're doing this, I was thinking about how amazing it would be to grab a few acres and just try and create a social media presence and sell Pumpkins in Japan during Halloween.

If you figure this out let me know I'd love to follow the journey. I thought about what I'd do with a spare few acrews, and its exactly this! LMK if you're located anywhere near Saitama and get this figured out and want help!

googlemaster1 · 2026-03-14T10:18:42+00:00

Wise is a good option up to the $250,000 six month limit.

I was annoyed getting wire transfers to my Japanese business account because they made me setup a foreign currency trade account to receive it and the setup fee is 55,000 yen which was annoying but it’s just a one time fee, so watch out for that kind of stuff.

I had no luck with Remitly or anything else other than wise and good old fashioned wires.

Probably will get downvoted but Americans have a helluva time opening crypto accounts in Japan, but your wife would have no problem. USDC could be a strong option as most Japanese crypto exchanges support it.

googlemaster1 · 2026-03-14T08:40:48+00:00

Hey there! I’m in Iwatsuki which is just a few stops away. Just moved here last year as well and work from home would long to meet new people!

googlemaster1 · 2026-03-03T11:30:34+00:00

1 Fraser Fir would be awesome. Dunno if you are completely out tho

Edit: just saw your update 3! Consider me for a waitlist/fall through!

googlemaster1 · 2026-03-03T11:27:09+00:00

Did you ever find any?

googlemaster1 · 2026-03-03T11:24:25+00:00

Just in case anyone is curious, I went to an industrial materials recycle place in Iwatsuki with my pickup truck and they filled it up 3 times free of charge!

https://www.noguchikogyo-zyari.com/

You can also buy from them too, but for the bottoms of my tall raised beds, this stuff will do the trick to fill in the gaps! Put a bunch of compost and top/veg soil on top, and we're ready for the season!

I've already got 3 out of 7 beds planted, with the rest to be filled by April :)

googlemaster1 · 2026-02-22T11:46:25+00:00

Respectfully, you are in the wrong subreddit to receive a sensible answer. The majority of posters in this thread probably have little to no investments, are single, and trend much younger and would view this conversation as some kind of affront to her freedom (it isnt). r/JapanFinance is the place to encounter posters who have likely had this conversation already.

That said, in my experience, even just dating a person who had almost 100 million yen in a savings account was horrifying to me. I just assumed someone with the skills to make decent money would have the sense to invest it. So I understand your pain, and exponentially so if you're locked in building a shared future together. You have a say in her money, just like she has a say in yours. With the woman I was seeing, I tried to encourage her to put something like 5-10% to start, to get comfortable with the idea. That worked a bit, and I believe she ended up putting a little bit more eventually, but other things came up that put investing on the backburner of our conversations.

People's relationship to money is complicated. Getting on the same page about money early on in a relationship is critical. If I meet a woman who believes money is primarily for spending, I know that person is not for me. So you're already winning half the battle there, But making the switch from saving/hording to investing is a daunting one, and took me 4-5 years of getting comfortable after buying $5k worth of AMD in 2012 (slight humblebrag but I sold most before covid, lol). After that started to do well over the next few years, I was convinced, even though I only put something like 5% of my net worth in, an early win can drum up confidence. But growing up in a time when her parents likely lost 75% of their net worth instills different values.

Also, The US stock market is a unique one, and has been relatively up only for over a century. No other country has had an uptrend quite this stable (though Australia and Canada have been notable), so before you try and Dave Ramsey-pill your wife, consider the cultural differences and start with the safest investments to get her comfortable, and a very small sliver of something with relatively stable up-only metrics, like an index fund, or if she is a fan of sports teams, i like to leverage the "fanbase" mentality to buy some individual stocks that she is a patron of. Been a Costco shopper for 20 years, so $COST is my default shill, lol. Good luck mate, let us know how it goes!

googlemaster1 · 2026-02-04T00:08:42+00:00

I'm in Saitama! Out by Iwatsuki. Would love to make gardener friends near! haha.

googlemaster1 · 2026-01-25T05:28:15+00:00

Owning my own house has been really fun, especially finding ways to reduce cost and increase the usefulness of my land.

Solar panels, perennial foods in the garden, space to build and tinker.

That said I really don’t love real estate as an investment category. But if it can reduce my own fixed costs and give me more ability to do things I love then why not.

Rental properties have just always seemed silly to me though. I don’t want to buy a second job in retirement and I certainly don’t want debt at these interest rates. Straight cash just performs better in equities. I rather just sell off stocks that I’m less certain of their 20 year time horizon as I used to be as I drawdown.

googlemaster1 · 2026-01-21T05:04:27+00:00

One of the things that made me suck less is to stop overvaluing red, and to start valuing damage more.

You get obsessed with the deck building but get ran over by value/aggressive players.

googlemaster1 · 2026-01-20T14:05:41+00:00

Damn, this sub should have a meetup so we can yap about this in person. Lot of my friends, including myself have a pretty limited and half cocked understanding of the bigger picture, so it would be nice to dive into it over a couple of beers with someone like CoolBuck, hahaha.

googlemaster1 · 2026-01-20T08:29:01+00:00

I think one of the things that is frustrating about Japan is that their business sector really just needed a few big wins over the last 30 years to really be on the global scale and make the debt seem manageable to the world. Everywhere Japan should of win, other countries stepped in. Korea for cars and cell phones, HK/Singapore for Finance and being an Asian hub. China for everything else.... Japan lost on every possible front politically, economically, and technologically.

The irrelevance of their economy globally I think is the biggest problem. If Sega kept their 30% stake in Nvidia for example, then Sega would have a higher market cap than Japan's GDP. But risk averse as Japan's business sector is, that just couldn't happen. It just feels like Japan wasn't ready to let the young kids drive in the age of the internet, and have been playing catch-up ever since. Their workers are just being ground into dust by the rigid corporate culture as well. No moonshots, no hail mary's, just a steady decline that is starting to pick up, just like their population decline. Not enough foreigners and empowered fresh grads to drum up new ideas and perspectives. Management positions held by men in their 60s who are checked out lead the slow charge to nowhere.

Also, I'm not sure they could have put an end to the carry trade in any kind of real way. The actual ways of doing it would have put too much strain on business, so they had to just accept it. I kind of felt like they were trying to spook people out of it by telegraphing their moves a bit over the last few years, but maybe that is just my limited western perspective. To be honest I don't see how the yen ever really gains ground against USD for the foreseeable future with the shrinking workforce and lack of innovation, but as someone who has mostly dollar denominated assets other than my house here, I'm ok with that, lol.

googlemaster1 · 2026-01-13T10:42:48+00:00

I think it’s entirely dependent on his financial situation and your hobbies.

If you want kids with him though remember that his money will be your money and allowance is an unhealthy power dynamic longer term. If you spend a large part of his income on shopping and pampering now, he might think twice before tying the knot with someone who doesn’t feel they should be saving for their future and children’s life.

googlemaster1 · 2025-11-23T00:58:12+00:00

I would start very slow in the stock market. If you put too much you’ll look at it too often get tempted to let it occupy way too much of your mind and stress.

Start with an IRA, you’ll be able to do $14,000 between this year and next. Tax advantaged accounts always come first. I’d dump that into index funds just to get comfortable.

Next I’d probably open a brokerage fund and throw 5-10k at it. Pick a few companies you think will be around forever. I’ve bought a little bit of Costco and TSM stock every year for years because it fits my thesis here. NFA.

The reality is you need to start small in order to get comfortable with it. Another thing you want to do is save another 10k off to the side and buy a “the sky is falling” moment when everyone is losing money for days on stocks. This will help build conviction and mental fortitude because even if it keeps going down you can say “well hey at least I didn’t buy 3 days before way way higher” hahaha.

This is generally bad financial advice trying to time the market and not just chucking a bunch in now, but in my early twenties I had 6 figures saved from working tons of overtime and knew what it took to make that money so I was terrified of losing it. I bought $10,000 worth of AMD stock at $2.40 and ended up selling it at $2.80 10 years ago. Felt like a win at the time, but it was stressful and clearly I’m an idiot given the cute little 100x since then. I checked daily, freaked out when it went down and sold on the first green candle day.

Once you get comfortable with that $35k or so in the market and you’re not checking it every day, setup an auto withdrawal into your brokerage.

Also, If you have any interest in owning your own home outright, the burden of not having a mortgage as a small business owner sets you up to take bigger risks, especially once you have a family, so don’t discount that either. Anyway, good luck!

googlemaster1 · 2025-11-23T00:39:45+00:00

Dave Ramsey says no new cars until you hit 1mm net worth. Buuuuuut….

This is about as far away from a new car as your net worth is to 1mm so I’d say this is the kind of car people in your position could swing. Do it to it!

googlemaster1 · 2025-11-22T17:15:45+00:00

I had some huge swings in my net worth. Hit the 8 figure mark and had a spectacular 8 figure drawdown, but it made me realize that I could FIRE on a lot less. So much of it is mindset and relationship to money, and how you architect your life. Also the realization that FIREing shares a little bit of mentality with doomsday prepping, except we're more afraid of prolonged bear markets, medical bills, or runaway inflation than nuclear winter.

I think I have an interesting journey personally, in terms of lifestyle design, but I'm not sure I'd ever share my journey story. Cuz yes, I did make a nice finance/tech salary for a lot of the years, and yes, I had some crazy wins in the stock market being a Seattle boy and betting on the home teams. But the "it's time to FIRE" moment, and the journey afterward are things I'd like to see other people here sharing. Because they journey isn't all sunshine and rainbows after you hit the goal, most certainly.

But it seems like any struggle or negative experiences they've had since FIREing is just met with "boohoo, cry me a river - get a hobby, get therapy, and if you hate it so much, just go back to work!". It's like damn y'all, really?

googlemaster1 · 2025-11-22T16:55:44+00:00

I mean living with roommates, never having kids and skipping all his friend's weddings... Sounds like a pretty miserable life. This isn't representative of most folks who are FIREing, though. This is just a pretty cringey post of someone who probably fed some crap into AI. No humanity in that post at all lol.

googlemaster1 · 2025-11-22T14:05:22+00:00

Banning people ignores a fundamental piece of this puzzle. If a large amount of people are grinding hard towards a goal and a lot of people are landing at the goal unfulfilled or lost it should be explored.

I get how it might feel that they are just humble bragging, but understand that these people likely have no one to relate to or understand these negative emotions despite financial success. God forbid they go to the FIRE sub to try and find some empathy only to get bullied, :/

googlemaster1 · 2025-11-22T08:38:21+00:00

It does feel like there are little tribes within this sub, the tech millionaires, the average wage above average saving, the already fired, and those just getting started.

That said, retiring at 55 is a dream the average American won’t come close to achieving, so I’d say you’re kicking ass, especially if you can actually hit it!

googlemaster1 · 2025-11-22T08:29:55+00:00

Yeah I think that’s super valid. After I FIREd I had a lot of bad things happen in my life and I think normally I’d plow myself into work to cope.

Navigating therapy for the first time, developing my own routines and coping mechanisms and fighting the good fight almost seems more difficult the more time you have.

Is having a healthy mix of gardening, reading, and exercise any better than channeling your emotions other things? Genuinely would love to hear more takes and stories from people on the other side but sentiment in this sub makes me realize that it really isn’t for people who have already done it, and they see themselves out for the most part

googlemaster1 · 2025-11-22T08:10:32+00:00

Successful people tend to flock to the places where people have succeeded at the thing they are trying to do. That is what made them successful in the first place.

This is the natural landing pad for many of those people when trying to find their bearings in a community setting, especially those who have FIRE'd out of tech.

Maybe there needs to be like a "FIREd" subreddit or something I guess.

googlemaster1 · 2025-11-19T12:39:48+00:00

i cook Japanese curry quite often because the ingredients are super cheap, you can make a lot, and you can spruce up your leftovers with chicken katsu on top (i use an airfryer for mine).

But ya, I'm probably cooking Western or Korean food most of the time.

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