2010 - looking back

Back in January, I listed a number of things that I would like to achieve during 2010 . The year end is now close enough that I can assess how many of them I achieved or progressed:

1. savings rate >40%: achieved. I will not know the exact rate until sometime in January when the December income and expense numbers come in, but even if I have zero savings in December (which will not happen), I will have achieved a savings rate greater than 40% of gross income.

2. aligning investments with my retirement asset allocation: some progress was made. We continue to make payments on our mortgages with a view to having our home paid off when I retire, I purchased a few more bonds (all RMB) , added to the equity portfolio and got rid of all but two of the "too small to be worth the effort" investments.

3. I now have precise spending data for a full year and have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about how this will change once I retire. Achieved.

4. miscellaneous tasks. Fail. My firm's insurer has a discretion whether or not to extend coverage to retirees. I won't find out until after I retire. No progress on the tech skills and I have done nothing to expand teh social circle.

5. my life insurance policy has been changed to a non-US policy. Done.

6. Trailwalker. Fail. I injured my right knee in early May and am still getting physiotherapy. There is a possibility that this may be permanent (in which case I need to rethink a number of my retirement plans).

7. continuing the novel. Fail. I have probably written less than 50 pages this year.

8. a children free holiday with Mrs Traineeinvestor. Done and done twice. We went to New York in March and Japan in October. Neither was cheap but given our savings rate, both trips were very affordable.

9. photography. Fail.

To round matters out, work life balance was something of a mixed bag with good balance at the beginning and end of the year and no real balance during the rest of the year. It could have been worse.

On the whole it has been a good year. Financially, it was all I could have reasonably wished for (although the year is not quite over). In other areas, it was more mixed, but that is only to be expected given the demands of my job. The biggest negative was my sports injury.