From our other sites
The story
The New NISA program’s lifetime tax-free investment cap of ¥18 million works out to exactly what you’d accumulate by investing ¥50,000 a month for 30 straight years. That alone would be enough to secure a comfortable retirement, yet surprisingly few people actually do it — a puzzle that became a hot topic on 5ch. The thread saw pushback against the claim that “statistically, only weirdos can keep investing for a full 30 years,” with posters arguing that how fast you fill the allowance depends heavily on your income and family situation. The discussion also touched on a deeper values question — whether it’s worth denying yourself in your youth just to leave money for old age — and lifestyle choices like whether staying at your parents’ house is the way to max out the cap faster.
What people said
you can spend your current paycheck freely and put it toward self-improvement or hobbies instead
That's exactly why — max out your NISA and just leave it alone,
and you can spend your current salary and bonuses however you want without a worry
The odds of living long are higher than the odds of dying young
Anyone who can keep investing with that kind of long-term horizon is statistically borderline weird
If you're still only take-home ¥200,000 a month after 30 years on the job, that'd be tough to pull off
That's why you're supposed to actually raise your income as you move through life stages
So if you live a normal life, filling the cap shouldn't even take 10 years
So you're saying you'll keep working even as an old man?
Maybe the move is: finish high school, live with your parents for 5-7 years to fill it up, then move out at 25
it's not like your assets are guaranteed to keep growing forever anyway
Ever heard of the idea of putting your spare cash into investing instead?
Or are you just too broke to invest in the first place?
Only guys still living with their parents can pull it off
If you're not left with spare cash on that salary, what kind of lifestyle are you even living?
As long as you're not rushing to fill it in record time, it's easily doable
If you've got a wife and kids to support, there's no way
Only guys still living with their parents can manage it
If you're that strapped for cash, you shouldn't be getting married and having kids in the first place
Guess it's impossible then
Please keep working till you die, laborer ✌︎('ω')✌︎
Seriously, only guys still living with their parents can do it
My household's dual-income, so it's easy for us
Sorry about that….
If society ends up flooded with old people working till they die, that'll keep wage growth suppressed, you know
That actually works out better for investors
That's exactly why I'm investing now — so I won't have to work by then
The cap is only ¥18 million, so it's not something to bet everything on — yet somehow a ton of people are doing exactly that
It all depends on what you actually buy within the NISA account
You're panicking over that little? What did you even do during the tariff shock, lol
In that case you're probably still up about ¥1.5 million compared to last year
Background and Key Points of the Debate
New NISA launched in 2024, and separate from its annual investment allowance (¥1.2 million for the “tsumitate” accumulation track plus ¥2.4 million for the growth-investment track), it sets a lifetime tax-free cap of ¥18 million. Investing ¥50,000 a month for 30 years comes to exactly ¥18 million, so the thread’s underlying math checks out. The real point of contention was how common it actually is to have the income and family situation needed to sustain that kind of investing for decades — opinions split sharply into “impossible” versus “easy” depending on whether posters were single, married, or still living with their parents. What tends to get overlooked, though, is that NISA is simply a scheme for making investment gains tax-free — it does not guarantee your principal or your returns. Notably, one poster in the thread reported their holdings had dropped in value month-over-month, a reminder that the assumption “max it out and your retirement is secure” still carries real market risk.
※This article is compiled and summarized from a 5ch thread on the Nandemo Jikkyo G (“Live Galileo”) board titled “Isn’t It Weird How Few People Max Out New NISA and Just Leave It for 30 Years, When That Would Secure Their Retirement?“
Leave a Reply