Won't Miss #365 - wiring money home

As I've mentioned before, Japanese banks have paltry interest rates on savings accounts. In fact, I'm surprised most people don't hide their money in old bento boxes and bury it in the back yard. That probably has more to do with the fact that so few people have actual backyards than it being considered a lesser option than putting it in the bank. Since I'd prefer to lose as little of my money to inflation as possible, I'd like to make a little interest on my savings. The only way to do that is to wire it back home. This is a big pain in the patootie. First of all, you have to fill out a bunch of forms in Japanese, which isn't so terrible but they appear to require quite a bit of after-faffing in which a polite clerk will take the documents and hand them off to someone who will frown over them and a computer screen for approximately 22 minutes. You can then hand them about $75 in fees and transfer your funds at an exchange rate which is at least one yen worse than the actual rate and wait for the cash to reach your account back home. Oh yes, you also have to tell them why you're sending it home and if they don't like your reason (and suspect money laundering), they're going to go tell the police on you and it'll be "fun" hijinks for all.

I won't miss the hassle, cost, and sense that my privacy is being unnecessarily invaded (in a minimal manner) when I wire money home.

Won't Miss #347 - monthly pay

This is a MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group) building, which is very tentatively linked to this post. I'm using this picture because of the man and poster person staring in awe at the silver scrotum sculpture in front of the building, which is more interesting than a generic bank picture. 

In the U.S., I was paid every two weeks and some people are paid every week. I think the system is set up in that fashion in order to compensate for the fact that most Americans are poor at budgeting and tend to spend all of the money they have on hand a bit too rapidly. Yeah, I know how that sounds like I'm bashing my home country, but it does reflect a culture in which many people often talk about "being broke until payday". Personally, I haven't had problems budgeting myself and I don't mind the fact that Japanese companies pay you once a month from that viewpoint. The problem for me isn't about being a spendthrift. It's about seeing the banks swamped on the 25th of the month (and the next few days for those who lag) and not being able to do any sort of simple transactions there if I happen to forget that it's close to payday or must do something necessary. Note that because I'm a foreigner and my money gets held onto longer by two of the three agencies that pay me for various jobs, I don't get paid on the 25th anyway, so it's not like I'm waiting for a deposit to withdraw money. Sometimes, things just come up and I need to go to the bank when everyone else gets paid.

I won't miss having to fight massive lines at the bank once a month because everyone else is getting paid at the same time once a month.

Will Miss #262 - low interest on loans

Hello Kitty wants to loan you money for your needs at low rates.

The flip-side to the previous post is that Japanese people get to borrow money at a rate which tends to be substantially lower than those in the West. If you buy a house or car, you get very attractive interest rates. This is especially appealing when you consider that it often takes 30 years to buy expensive property in Japan. It's also common in Japan for there to be no interest on small private loans depending on the type of account you have with your bank.

I will miss the low interest rates for loans.

Won't Miss #262 - low interest on savings

This sign does not talk about savings interest rates. Such signs do not exist because such information is too embarrassing to be promoted. Please enjoy this picture of the pretty model next to information on credit card loans at Mizuho bank instead. It's the best I could do as a tangentially related picture.

The Japanese are a country of savers, and that means that banks offer them little incentive to save more than they already do. The idea that your money should be working for you, rather than you working for it, would be a baffling notion with interest rates that have to be expressed as only being to the right of the decimal point. The rates are so embarrassingly low that it's often hard to find out what they are for a particular bank, even for Japanese people. My students have tried to find the rates for their banks and it's a chore to tunnel through the information the bank offers to find them. If you live in Japan, the only way to make any appreciable interest on your savings is to send your money back home.

I won't miss the insanely low interest rates on savings.

Won't Miss #220 - paying for holiday ATM access

In the U.S., if you use the ATM of a bank other than your own, you have to pay a fee. This makes a little bit of sense because it's likely that there is some sort of special handling of electronic funds transferring between banks when you use a bank other than the one you keep an account in. In Japan, if you use an ATM of your own bank and it is a holiday or weekend, you have to pay a fee of 100 yen ($1.08). To me, this makes no sense at all because it's not like the machines have extra little men working behind them on weekends and holidays who need to be paid on those days. These fees are merely a way of gouging customers even when there is no extra cost to the bank for holiday access to the machines as compared to weekday access.

I won't miss being charged to use my own bank's ATM's based on the date or time.