Happy New Year! I haven’t posted in a few months due to a recent change in my living situation: I moved into a new apartment with my girlfriend! It was an expensive move (as is the norm in Japan) with a lot of unavoidable fees, and the rent is about double what each of us were paying living separately, but in return we are getting almost 3 times the space. Each of us has enough space to work from home without disturbing each other, and we are able to spend even more time together without having to plan ahead or compensate for work schedules....

I got a new phone this month since my 3+ year old OnePlus 6 is approaching end-of-life. It received its final major software update about a month ago, its battery has trouble making it through a day without recharging, its charging connector seems to be bent since most cables don’t stay seated, and various other small issues continue to pop up. It’s been a great phone so far, and I’ll probably keep it around as a backup phone or to turn into a home device or hobby project....

Started a new job this month. So far, it’s much nicer than my previous job. It’s refeshing to work on a new team doing a new project, especially one that already has a proven track record of success. Hopefully my tenure here will be longer than my previous jobs in Japan, since I’m tired of going through the motions to change jobs every 6 months or so. Not counting relatively short gaps between jobs, I haven’t had a real vacation in almost 2 years....

This month I decided to try getting more organized with tracking finances. Up until now, I have been using Mint to track my financial transactions through my US bank accounts and credit cards. It’s been working well for me for over a decade, but the product itself is pretty stagnant and hasn’t advanced much over the years. I can’t really complain since it’s a free service and does all the basics of what I need it to do, but the fact that it doesn’t work with non-US accounts is a bit of a problem since I live in Japan....

I made a slight change to my investment strategy this month by changing my US small-cap value fund from Vanguard’s fund tracking the CRSP SCV index (VSIAX) to the more focused Avantis SCV ETF (AVUV). It’s an actively-managed fund (gasp!) but the expense ratio is really low which mitigates the principal downside of active funds. It is more focused than VSIAX due to applying more stringent value and profitability screens, so in theory one should expect better risk-adjusted performance due to greater exposure to the value and profitability factors....

As hinted in last month’s post, I have decided to change jobs (again!). When I start my new job in July, this will mark the 4th company that I’ve worked for in Japan in less than two years. Since moving to Japan, my work history has been much more turbulent than I intended, mostly due to COVID wreaking havoc on the world economy (and completely killing off my first employer in Japan), but also due to drastic changes in business strategy from my employers, which may or may not also be in response to COVID....

I’m sorry for updating so late. It’s almost time to write my April report. So right after the March state of emergency was lifted, I went back to the office to work, only to find out a couple days later that my neighboring coworker had been exposed to a virus carrier, and he later tested positive (no symptoms) a few days after that. We all promptly returned to remote work until we could all get tested....

Not too much to write about this month. Tokyo’s state of emergency was extended by 1 month, so more work from home for me. New virus cases continue to fall, but since the vaccine has only just started rolling out (only for medical workers at this time), it will probably be at least another 5 or 6 months until things can go back to normal in Japan. Financially, the markets mostly continued to climb, with some volatility during the last week of February....

So… how about that GME? It’s not often that the market grabs so much of people’s attention that it becomes a main story in the press for so long. The last time I can remember this much attention focused on financial markets is the last major Bitcoin bubble in late 2017, and of course that one also didn’t end well (at least in the short term, as BTC is currently at over $37k as I write this…)....

Another year gone, and not a moment too soon. I ended up doing a modestly-sized Roth IRA conversion after all. Since I can claim the FEIE this year to exclude my earned income in Japan, that leaves me with some tax-free space from my standard deduction with which to do Roth conversions. I did my best to estimate my conversion amount to completely fill up the tax-free space, but I’ll find out for sure once I file my taxes in a couple months....