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The story
A thread on 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyo G board titled “60% of people still haven’t started NISA” sparked a debate over how to prepare for retirement. Some argued that employee pension (kosei nenkin) alone is enough, while others countered that anyone in their 40s or older today can barely expect any real pension at all. Pro-investing posters pointed to recent stock market gains as reason to keep up regular contributions, but others warned of crashes and a stronger yen, questioning whether small monthly investments of around 20,000 yen even matter. A new graduate even chimed in asking for concrete advice on how much to invest.
What people said
That's exactly what creates the retirement gap. OP, your employer's paying half your pension premiums too, right?
Even some baby boomers are struggling, and you're still thinking like that?
Anyone 40 or older today is basically getting zero real pension.
Going broke from over-investing in NISA is dumb, but skipping it entirely just means being broke in retirement instead.
Honestly there aren't many people like that, and the ones who are just enjoy doing it anyway.
Turns out it doesn't make any money at all.
You won't make money unless you actually fill the units and manage it yourself.
Even if it never comes, just having peace of mind is worth it.
If you think you'll have no money in old age, you end up thinking short-term while you're young.
People were saying that back in 2022 too, and it's kept hitting new highs ever since.
The US 10-year Treasury yield is over 5% and there's still no crash at all.
Isn't that kind of empty?
Isn't it sadder to be an old geezer still working your body to the bone, getting yelled at by your juniors?
Doing manual labor once you're already elderly is more pathetic.
Don't you ever think about your money losing value to inflation instead?
Classic example of someone getting played by NISA hype.
You all assume inflation just keeps climbing forever like you say.
I'm thinking the opposite is going to happen.
People have been calling NISA risky for five years running now.
Funny how it's tripled in value since then lol.
a stronger yen is a headwind,
stocks are volatile so there will be downturns too,
and life is long, there will be times you actually need the cash,
yet you're all talking like you can just keep contributing for 10+ years straight without a hitch.
Not many people have the mental toughness to keep contributing while watching their losses grow during a downturn.
Even if the yen strengthens all the way to ¥50/dollar, you'd make it back within three years —
and besides, a weaker dollar is itself one of the things that drives stocks higher.
Just black out and ignore it till it passes.
If that's still too scary, put your money into Japanese stocks with market caps over 5 trillion yen and high dividend yields instead — treat it like a substitute for a fixed deposit.
Forget 10 years — the market's been so monstrous lately that indexes have doubled in as little as 3 years.
Both the track record of success and the cushion of unrealized gains are huge.
It doesn't look like it's heading into the red anytime soon.
The problem is whether that kind of run keeps going forever.
People keep contributing because they've learned that if you don't stay in, you miss out on the big rallies.
That's different from the people who never started at all.
The amount's just too small.
You're better off not thinking about whether it means anything and just doing it.
Money's money though, isn't that hard to just not think about?
Then try individual stocks instead.
Even a small loss will be enough to wreck your focus at work.
You won't feel like you're really doing it until you've put in about 1 million yen in principal.
So just grind it out until then — and once you do, you start thinking 'wait, this is more than I put in?'
Really just depends on the person, there's no other way to answer that.
I make sure to keep one full year's take-home pay in savings.
Depends on your age, doesn't it.
If you're in your 30s you'd want at least 5 million yen minimum.
Honestly, putting around 1 million yen into an index fund isn't going to change much either way.
My gross salary is apparently 300,000 yen (a month).
Put 5,000 yen into iDeCo, 50,000 yen into NISA, and keep the rest for living expenses and fun money.
If you're going all-in on an All-Country fund, you'd want 100,000 yen.
If it's just NASDAQ, even 40,000 yen is fine.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
NISA (Nippon Individual Savings Account, a tax-free investment program) was overhauled in 2024 into the “new NISA” system, which raised contribution limits and made the tax-free status permanent. The thread split between two camps: those who believe that as long as you’re paying into the employee pension system, retirement is nothing to worry about, and those who think you need to prepare through your own investments on the assumption that pension payouts will shrink. Employee pension premiums are split evenly between employer and employee, so phrases like “the company pays it for you” refer to that cost-sharing structure — but it’s commonly misunderstood as a promise that your future payout is guaranteed, which it isn’t. There was also a lot of optimism in the thread based on recent stock market gains, but that optimism is rooted in just the past few years of market conditions, and even posters in the thread questioned whether the same confidence would hold up during a future downturn.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “The reality that 60% of people still haven’t started NISA lolololol.”
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