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The story
Starting October 1, 2026, brokerages across Japan will begin accepting account applications for the new “Child NISA” program. Open to children aged 0 to 17, the tax-free investment scheme allows up to ¥600,000 per year (¥6 million cumulative) in tax-exempt investment, with full rollout set for January 2027. A thread on 5ch drew attention to warnings that, depending on parents’ wealth and investment know-how, the gap between children could balloon to anywhere from several million yen to as much as ¥25 million by the time they turn 18. Commenters were split over whether this gap is a problem calling for correction or simply the natural result of individual family choices.
Starting October 1, brokerages will finally begin accepting applications to open “Child NISA” accounts. The new tax-free scheme lets children aged 0 to 17 invest in mutual funds, tax-free, up to ¥600,000 a year and ¥6 million total. While brokerages are stirring up excitement with lavish sign-up campaigns, some worry that “parents’ financial literacy could create a hopeless gap between kids by the time they turn 18.” Ahead of the program’s full launch in January 2027, we look into the “future inequality problem” lurking within this new system.
Shueisha
Reference image: Fuji TV’s Mr. Sunday
Source: shueisha.online / Original article here
What people said
Won't it all just collapse and take everyone down with it?
If it's for peace of mind, who cares if it all goes to hell?
If something like the All Country index fund ('Orukan') collapses,
humanity's finished anyway — NISA or not.
Then investing's pointless too, in that case.
Only if we've somehow become a tax-free utopia by then.
What are NISA's main stocks anyway?
What dividend percentage does NISA even pay?
the world is built so the rich just keep getting richer.
After 1 year, 10 years, 100 years, the wealthy snowball into even more wealth as time passes.
The original rich people didn't get rich through mutual funds,
so trying to get rich that way yourself is the wrong approach.
It basically tracks the index (the poster wrote a crude pun on "index"), so it's fine when stocks are booming, but if it crashes and never recovers you're stuck holding a dead position forever.
About 25 years ago I got stuck like that, and the fund eventually force-liquidated me, so I ended up roughly breaking even.
If they'd just let it ride, I'd have made a killing — that was back when the Nikkei was around 15,000.
People who never actually invest are always full of excuses.
Tell them to just throw in ¥1,000 a month like it's money they're writing off, and they still won't do it.
They make excuses like "that's too little to matter anyway."
If they'd just try it, they'd actually understand how it works.
https://gzo.ai/i/tzBm6fm.png
Oops, my bad — gzo.ai doesn't let you delete posts. This site lets you delete instantly though.
https://n.picvr.net/2609301037455450.jpg
Same screenshot?
Can't see the bottom part though.
By the way, how old are you now, and how many years of investing did it take to reach that amount?
Same screenshot, yeah.
I meant to delete it right away, but in Re: #80 I messed up and posted it on gzo.ai by mistake.
I'm 51 now, 9 years of investing.
What are you even talking about?
Wait, are you secretly GACKT? (the musician known for over-the-top wealth claims online)
¥300,000 a month into Mom's NISA
¥50,000 a month into the Child NISA
There's just no way that's realistic.
If you can't swing it, you don't have to max it out on the fastest schedule — just fill it up eventually.
On top of the parents' ¥18 million x2,
you now get another ¥6 million in tax-free room.
Yay, lucky rich family!
That's basically the story here, right?
The parents' NISA accounts will be maxed out by 2028, so after that it's easy street.
For a couple of years you can just dip into savings or sell off some taxable-account holdings to cover it.
https://n.picvr.net/2609301048389733.png
This just looks like a giveaway to the wealthy to me.
The LDP's always favored the rich anyway.
People who actually count as wealthy blew past the NISA limits ages ago.
NISA isn't a system for the wealthy.
It's meant to help the "mass" tier move up to the "upper-mass" tier (standard Japanese wealth-bracket terms).
Anyone above that is already using other methods for tax savings and asset management.
If they just walked in the side entrance to the supermarket, they could get it for about half price.
Hard to take "life is tough" seriously when I see that.
There's also a theory that young people are already used to inflation.
They don't even blink at paying a lot for ramen anymore.
Smells a lot like the mindset that gets people mistaking credit cards for unlimited money and ending up on the brink of bankruptcy.
Pretty common among young people.
Everyone will get used to it eventually.
There was even an era when national railway fares doubled in just two years.
Background and Points of Debate
Child NISA operates as a separate allowance from the adult NISA program (¥3.6 million a year, ¥18 million cumulative), permitting tax-free investment of up to ¥600,000 a year (¥6 million cumulative) under a child’s name, for kids aged 0 to 17. Families where the parents have already maxed out their own NISA allowances are positioned to fill this new allowance sooner, which tends to widen the gap in asset formation among children. The thread split over whether to view this gap as “the result of parental effort and choice” or as “a system that locks in inequality based on household wealth” — with the latter camp arguing that tax breaks like this are, by nature, aimed at families who already have money to spare. At the same time, NISA is a tax exemption, not a guarantee of investment returns — if markets slump, the gap could narrow. The fact that “filling it fastest” doesn’t necessarily translate proportionally into future asset value is a nuance that gets lost in the headline figures alone.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “‘The ¥25 million gap at age 18 is brutal…’ Concerns over young people’s ‘abnormal inequality’ as Child NISA launches, with some parents saying ‘maxing it out fastest is love♥’.”
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