2016: A year in review

Thought I'll do a review of 2016.

On my own personal finances  
Missed investing savings target of 18k/yr, Only hit about 15k this year.

Had kept my expenses very low, however, had to fork out cash to buy and replace stuff that broke.

My current practice on increments from my job is 50:50 split, 50% to savings/investments (rounding up to the nearest 50) and 50% to expenditure, I'll review again to see if it allows more buffer to spending in case of replacement (hope I get a nice increment too).

On my Singapore Stock Portfolio

 

Portfolio returns this year seems much better than I first started (finally turned it around despite all my prior blunders), I beat STI by a hair (~0.7%).

But overall performance is very poor (-0.38% compounded, even a bank account returns better ^^").

Well, I'm giving myself about 4-9 more years to see if I can maintain such a performance and build more conviction in my strategy.

Total Dividends Collected in 2016 is at 1552.81 (I have not included Singtel upcoming dividends as it would be paid next year).
This makes up $129.40 in dividends per month :) (double from last year)
Hope I can keep it up :)

Still far from my first port of gold so hope to get there soon! Hope to hit 150k portfolio in about 3-4 more years (from Cai Haoxiang article here), which currently I am behind schedule. ^^"
That being said, it has grown from the prior size of ~28k to the current ~43k. Guess it is an improvement. ^^"

Despite the various books on investing and trading I have read, as well as investment courses I have attended, I am still learning and fine tuning my own strategy (kinda of a "rojak" of various ideas I guess). ^^" There's always so much more to read and learn from the various bloggers here :)

Had my first Rights issue in 2016 (hopefully reduce the number of REITs I got, imagine having a lot of them and having insufficient money to subscribe to all of them @_@)

I have made my fair share of mistakes on hindsight, such as Soilbuild REIT (weak sponsor and heavy exposure to O&G) and Comfort Delgro (didn't purchase cheap enough as well as some errors in calculations). I also realised I don't know the O&G cycle enough and I should stay out until I get much more familiar.
Also, I would focus more on larger and stronger companies and avoid smaller ones as my analysis isn't very indepth.

Whether ARA Management would be bought out remains to be seen.

On my US S&P500 Portfolio
Nothing much to say here. Just trying out DRIPs with the ETF, but the portfolio is really small (~4k USD) so it won't make much impact to my financial status.

That being said, the overall XIRR for it would be 9.25% (includes the cash in the brokerage account, but I have nto included Fx). Looks great doesn't it? But there's no cash injection for some time (lack of cash), as well that it is probably due to the recent rally (US is super expensive now), so whether it is really sustainable remains to be seen.

On my CPF
My CPF SA is ahead of my projection schedule (still waiting for the funds in my PSEA account to come in, so it can be transferred to SA), probably I'll skip my targeted 3x 3k topups to SA (was gonna do 4x, but already done one).
And maybe a couple of years after I might look at topping up my SRS instead with 3k per year to save on a bit of tax and investing in either ETFs/dividend investing (though I still think it isn't really significant, but just to aim as an additional reserve I can tap on for retirement that is tax free).
Or may just decide to put it into my S&P500 ETF portfolio. I'll review it again.

On my job
My new workplace is indeed very different from research where I am more accustomed to (I still love research but following the sciences in form of reading and videos as a pastime, perhaps until the day where money isn't a concern I guess).

Hope I get a nice increment next year :)

On my personal life
I would be getting a cheap e-ink ebook reader in 2017, as my small bookshelves at home are completely full, and there are books that I wanna keep for life, so storing them in electronic formats will preserve them through the test of time.
Not to mention some books are terribly heavily to bring about and reading from the phone/computer can be rather straining on the eyes.
There's a limit to the adjustments on font type, contrast, and color, unless I buy a very good monitor or phone (I'm using low-med range models), but that would be more expensive than getting an e-ink reader.

I am also glad to have fulfilled one of my wishlist items, where I got to meet and take photo with Marco Pierre White :D
Keeps me reminded on why am I accumulating so much money and that money is just a means not an end.

On a side note, I finally finished a game from my childhood this year too! Looking back, it is already 25 years :)


Well, let's look forward to 2017 and make it a better year for ourselves :)