If I didn't see my HR sending me emails reminding us to complete our mid-year appraisals at work, I wouldn't have noticed that we are already mid year through 2016. It seemed that it was just yesterday that we began the new year but now here we are, today.

Towards the end of the year in 2015, I've made some personal goals (link here) that I want to achieve by the end of 2016 so I think it's good that I have them reviewed on this mid-year review.

For this goal, I've actually had to change the way to measure from the previous year since I have now put the market benchmark as a reference for comparison. What this means is that in a given year, if the market returns a negative 20% but my own performance is a negative 19%, I would have done a 1% spread better. I've also chosen the STI to be the standard benchmark reference since all of my holdings are in SGX.

To date, the STI is about 20 points (or 0.8%) down from the start of the year while I've managed to churn out a year to date performance (based on May result) of 16.8% inclusive of dividend since the start of the year. With another 2H dividend still to come, I'm expecting to add at least another 2.5% to the performance.

The outperformance is mainly due to the delisting of CMP announced in April as well as taking advantage of the recent down market we've seen in period from Feb to April. Without them, the returns would be most visibly lower.

Verdict: Pass

The goal this year was to expand my cashflow in the form of dividend income from the base which means I will be more than ever looking at the yield and payout component more importantly than before. Still, these have to be fundamentally strong in order for dividends to be sustainable since the last thing I'd want would be for the company to cut or slash dividends due to poor fundamentals.

To date, I've received a total dividend income of $10,904 for the first half. From the numbers, it does certainly looks like I will miss the target once again for this year as I will only be expecting at most another $7k to add to the dividends by year end. In any case, I'll just have to see how close I can get by end of the year.

Verdict: Fail

I've smacked through this goal by a mile as I have attended 5 AGMs so far (Nam Lee, FCT, Ascott, Ireit, Kingsmen).

This year, I've been able to better schedule my time at work and go for these AGMs meetings so I am tremendously pleased with the way I have been able to gain better insight going into these meetings.

Verdict: Pass

This is another goal which I have been extremely pleased with how things are going because I can visibly feel my health improving well this year after a good balance of rest and decent food intakes.

My body also often feels aching at night after a hard day of work and carrying my son around but since I've used the koyok rub, it gets completely refreshed in the morning. In addition, I've started to take plenty of fruits too this year, in particular avocado , cantaloupe and apples.

Verdict: Pass

This is a goal which looks particularly odd especially to someone who wishes to save more by doing activities which other people are not choosing to take.

I've been extremely pleased with the amount of spending spent on these categories this year because it means I had lived a better life this year. So far, I've chosen to host a friend's gathering, traveling with families, foster closer ties between grandparents and grandchildren and many more. These are the sort of worthwhile money to spent on which have no regrets and I will definitely continue to put my effort in working out these deals.

Verdict: Pass

I've not yet managed to find a time to do this one.

With work on weekdays and precious family time to spend on weekends, it is getting incredibly difficult to find time suitable for doing volunteering service, which is something which I wanted to at some point.

Still, with another 2H yet to come, I hope I'll be able to work something out from this one.

Verdict: Fail

Out of the 6 goals, I've cleared 4 for now while I still have work to do to improve the other 2 goals.

Let's see what 2nd half of the year might brings us. I am already expecting to announce some good news pretty soon, but we'll see by then :)