Even 40 Million Yen Lasts Only 28 Years: Japan's Asset Longevity Lesson

Forty million yen for retirement sounds safe until you run the numbers: financial planners cited by Toyo Keizai estimate it lasts roughly 28 years — depleting around age 93 for a couple retiring at 65, in a country where living to 100 is increasingly routine. The real disruptor is inflation. For three decades, Japanese cash lost nothing to prices; with producer prices running at 6% and consumer inflation around 3%, uninvested savings now halve in real value every couple of decades. The 'asset longevity' formula has been rewritten, and the NISA boom is Japan's institutional response — a forced migration from savings culture to investment culture. The universal lessons: plan in real returns, not nominal balances; starting to invest at 50 is viable but belongs in low-cost, long-horizon vehicles; and the biggest retirement risk isn't a market crash — it's being too conservative for too long a life.