Newbie Questions

[mattymcmatt]

I recently came across PP and read through Harry Browne's Fail Safe Investing and the new PP book.  I have some questions related to my personal situation and some things that I didn't see addressed in the book (or maybe I missed).

- I am a Canadian currently living in Japan married to a Japanese woman.  I work remotely and currently earn my income in US dollars.  My wife works locally and earns Yen.  My assets are currently all in Canadian and US dollars/stocks and my wife has Yen saved up.  We don't know where we'll be in the future.  We could stay in Japan or move to Canada/US or we could rotate back and forth between the two countries.  We are currently renting because of our uncertainty.  We have no kids yet but our situation will probably depend on what happens with that.  How should we implement the portfolio? 

I was thinking it might be good to have 2 PPs.  One for Canada and one for Japan to eliminate some of the currency risk. Does anyone have a similar situation and have advice on what you have done?

- If we implement 2 PPs, for the gold portion, would it count as international diversification to store the gold in Canada and Japan?  Or should we use a 3rd country?

- I don't understand the reason why the longest period is good for the bonds portion and not to let them go below 20 years.  Perhaps I missed it but I didn't understand that part.

- In the PP book, it was written that in a dire situation, Tbills would be paid before FDIC deposits.  Why is that?

- Reading through the books and the logic, it seems to make a lot of sense.  But being a little sceptical, is there any situation in which the PP would lose wealth over a long period of time?  I guess I didn't understand why HB says that a recession is the worse case for this portfolio, but that by definition, a recession is limited to 18 months.  Could someone explain that?

[KevinW]

I was thinking it might be good to have 2 PPs.  One for Canada and one for Japan to eliminate some of the currency risk. Does anyone have a similar situation and have advice on what you have done?

I don't know anything about the specifics of investing in Japan or Canada, but on its face this sounds like a reasonable plan.

I guess I didn't understand why HB says that a recession is the worse case for this portfolio, but that by definition, a recession is limited to 18 months.  Could someone explain that?

Browne explained this on his radio show, and the PP article on the ERE wiki addresses it briefly:
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/wiki/ ... _recession

[RuralEngineer]

Congratulations!  You officially have the most complicated financial situation I've ever seen!  And I thought trying to get a PP to work out cleanly across a 401K, Roth 401K, Rollover IRA, and Roth IRA was a mess...

[mattymcmatt]

Congratulations!  You officially have the most complicated financial situation I've ever seen!  And I thought trying to get a PP to work out cleanly across a 401K, Roth 401K, Rollover IRA, and Roth IRA was a mess...

Haha, well I don't think it's *that* complicated but yeah, it's more to think about than most.

[LazyInvestor]

For all individuals from a (small) country X, who live in another (small) country Y, and have no clue where they'll retire, I'd recommend having just US PP and taking advantage of the size of the US economy, USD as the world reserve currency, and the overall extremely low cost of implementing and maintaining US PP as compared to other PPs. While Canada and Japan are not really small, and while a combination of CAD and JAP PP could work, I'd still go with US PP.

[Ad Orientem]

For all individuals from a (small) country X, who live in another (small) country Y, and have no clue where they'll retire, I'd recommend having just US PP and taking advantage of the size of the US economy, USD as the world reserve currency, and the overall extremely low cost of implementing and maintaining US PP as compared to other PPs. While Canada and Japan are not really small, and while a combination of CAD and JAP PP could work, I'd still go with US PP.

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