I’m leaving Japan and the exchange rate is very aweful. Do you guys want have tricks on how to combat losses? Currently I have 10,000,000 yen sitting in my account I am planning to transfer my money to wise account and keep there sitter until yen recovers. Is that possible? How long can you have your money stick in Wise?
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Is your wise account registered in Japan? I thought you couldn’t have > 1M balance in there at all. Same goes for paypal (a recent addition as of few years ago). I think you’re going to actually have to transfer it to a real bank which allows holding JPY.
I am about to leave Japan as well, but as far as i know the yen will not be recovering anytime soon, so i think i have no choice but to take the hit. I may be misremembering, but it doesn’t seem to be to plausible to leave it in a wise account for years. I wish there was another way though. Wish i had transferred my savings a few years ago when i had the thought.
I don’t see the yen coming back up any time soon, I think you’re just gonna have to take the hit and convert it.
People have been asking this for a long time and unfortunately the answer is:
There’s nothing you can do. No one knows what will happen to the yen. There are professional fx traders who have no idea. It sucks that the yen is so weak but if you keep it in a wise account or a Japanese bank account, it will do nothing and lose value to inflation.
Transfer it over to USD (or whatever currency you want to xfer to), suck up the loss and do something productive with it, like invest it or spend it.
On a side note, look into the personal finance reddits or into finance resources. You have been losing so much in opportunity cost by keeping that much cash, especially in a Japanese bank account where it gets 0 interest.
If you think the yen will recover, you could transfer the money now and then short the yen vs. your currency.
Sure. I predict the yen will go up. Then the yen will go down. Then it will go up again. Then it will go down again. Rinse and repeat.
There is also a way to fix your current situation in just three easy steps:
1. Build a time machine.
2. Travel back to when the JPY was much stronger than it is today.
3. Exchange your JPY for your currency of choice.
Let us know when you’ve completed step 1.
It does not have to be a wise account. Check your home country’s bank for bank accounts with multiple currencies. Then use Wise to transfer it there.
You’ll take a hit with transaction fees. My suspicion is you won’t earn much back, even if you do that and it’ll take quite awhile to get any sensible returns.
You have been saving money in a relatively low income country, that’s why our money disappears when we go to exchange it. We’re simply not that well paid compared to people in Europe or America. Just have to bite the bullet.
Exchange rate goes up, exchange rate goes down. Literally nobody on the planet knows what will happen to it. You’re better off just cashing out, sticking it all in an index fund ASAP, and you’ll earn far more than trying to time the exchange rate.
What will you do in 5 year’s time, when the yen is still worthless and you’ve lost years’ worth of interest?
The Yen wasn’t great when I moved here and it seemed like a foolish idea to hoard savings in the hope that it might rebound.
I’ve been transferring my savings back monthly and that’s been a better move overall, I think.
If the yen is low, why not just save it until it goes higher again?
No advice, but I am sharing your misery.
I am also trying to move my family back to the US. Between bills and such we have only been able to save around 1,000,000 yen this year which we were stoked about until we found out that with conversion and transfer fees, etc it would be well under $6,000. Maybe in 10 years we can move back.
Honestly the best choice would be to buy a Moneymarket Fund/ETF that holds Bonds in $ or €. You should be able to buy directly with ¥. This is what Big Companies (Like Apple/MS etc.) do to remain liquid while collecting interest. You can exchange back into ¥ within minutes.
You will essentially hold EUR/USD and will get the current interest rate of the Libor/Euribor. (~3%p.a. currently)
There’s little risk involved. Of course if the ¥ soars, you’ll lose out. Also if interest rates decrease, courses will correct. Though these changes should be announced before.
Can you keep the yen in a multi-currency account in the US and wait and see? Change it bit by bit when you really need cash
This wont work for everyone but if you have the ability, you can buy things here in Japan and sell worldwide in USD. I have been doing this with a few things from Yahoo.
At my company I’m hedging yen at 168 right now.
Doesn’t mean it will get to that level, but that is what I’ve worked to pay for a hedge to protect my yen denominated sales for the next 12+ months.
My take is that it won’t get stronger any time soon.
Buy a GT-R or some other rare 25 year old collectible car. When/if the yen appreciates you could take advantage of both the increase car value and the yen.
I did the same with a Defender when the UK pound crashed pre-brexit.
This is not unique to the JPY. Most other currencies also are very weak against the USD with the exception of CHF. If I were you, I would exchange half and the leave the other half as a bet that JPY would strength after some time.
Figure out how to invest it and do so.
Personally I have a broad portfolio of index based mutual funds for stocks and bonds 80% of which is international and 20% is domestic, yen based.
The US stock market wasn’t super-fantastic the last year, but because of the huge decline in the value of they yen, my returns for they year still look very good. I’m sure that won’t be the case forever, and if they yen gets stronger, my returns will look less stellar, and I’m fine with that since this is a long-term plan/allocation.
Holding more than an emergency fund(~3-6 months of expenses depending on who you ask) is losing out on potential future gains.
Lol easy. Convert to USD, buy FXY. Ideally in a tax deferred account
Fee suck but Shinsei lets me store my yen in USD
What is your home currency? In the US, short term t-bills are yielding 5.2-5.4% today. You can move the cash to a brokerage and ladder t-bills and grind it back 5% for now and who knows what the rate will be later, probably lower, though.
Does anyone know if a bank in Japan will transfer Canadian dollars to a multi-currency account in Europe? Both Wise and Shinsei / SBI told me that they will not do it. So I have a large sum of Canadian dollars in my Shinsei / SBI account just sitting there, and I want to invest it in ETFs using my European account.