My Remote Worker's Guide to Saving Money and Self-Management-Vol. 2 "What Long-Term Investments Bring"

I have been working remotely for about 14 years. I have been a remote worker since before the term "remote work" became commonplace in recent years. I am a full-time remote worker, not a part-time remote worker who comes to the office several times a week. I would like to share with you some of the things I have learned in the process of looking at my own way of life.

I don't think you can talk about saving money without talking about "investment.
This is because saving and investing go hand in hand. Beyond saving, there is investing.

I think I started investing around 2019. It was the end of Abenomics, but the Nikkei Stock Average was still rising. I tried various methods, but they didn't work, and through trial and error, I ended up with US stock ETFs in 2022. I have one ETF, the S&P 500. I currently have about 5 million invested and have a profit of a few percent, and it has been steadily declining for the entire year of 2022. I had just changed my approach to a single U.S. stock ETF, but I was not upset. Why?
Because I had learned the history of U.S. stocks.

Until then, I had only vaguely considered investing as a short-term investment.
Therefore, I was happy or sad at the daily fluctuation of stock prices. Even at work, I was always worried about the stock price. When I was losing money, I often had trouble sleeping because I was worried about tomorrow's stock price. I gathered information that was good for the stocks I owned and made predictions all the time. At that time, I also dabbled in bear stocks. Both bulls and bears were taking up my daytime.

Then, in late 2021, I came across U.S. equity ETFs. U.S. stock ETFs, especially the S&P 500, have been going up and down and up and down. The daily ups and downs were minor, but over the long term, this ETF kept going up. Knowing this, I became interested in "long-term investing," which had fallen on deaf ears until then. Until then, I think I had turned away from the fact that my motivation for investing had been the desire to make a lot of money quickly through short-term investments. I gave up on that desire and decided to shift to long-term investing.

What did this shift to long-term investing bring me?
The biggest thing is a "calm mind. As I mentioned earlier, short-term investments
I am upset by the daily fluctuations of stock prices. I cannot concentrate on the work in front of me because I am worried about the stock price. During breaks, they check the stock price, which is not restful.
But now that I have shifted to long-term investment, I don't have to worry about the daily fluctuation of stock prices anymore.
Those who have experienced this must be saying the same thing.
It is true that the annual profit may be small in the case of long-term investment. But by waiting 10 or 20 years over a long period of time, the forces of well-being also come into play and profits grow.
The results will be seen long into the future.
I don't want to devote my precious life time to investing, and I don't want to lose my mind. So I think the shift to long-term investments was the right decision in my case.

The second most important thing is that I was able to learn how the world economy works.
Prices are soaring because supply cannot keep up with the sudden increase in demand after the Corona. Inflation is tremendous in the United States. It is at a level that cannot be compared to Japan. The news reported that the number of travelers to Hawaii has recently increased as before, but I was astonished at how much it costs for a traveler from Japan to Hawaii. For example, a family of four might spend several million yen. It is heartbreaking to think of the families who arrived and found the inflation to be more than they had imagined.