The Journey So Far in 2014

2014 is an eventful year for me.  There are mixed feeling of pain, sadness, anger, relief and joy.

1. Lost of my father

My father passed away this year after four long years of suffering after a stroke without prior symptom.  He could not swallow food after the stroke and was on tube feeding. The feeding tube needs to be replaced every two months and there was pain and discomfort replacing the tubes. Very offen he pulled out the tube himself and inevitably shortened the tube changing schedule and suffered more pain and discomfort.

He also has limited mobility and needed help getting up from bed, changing of clothes, diaper and bathing. 

He was on 3 hourly feeding schedule on liquid milk powder and the cost of the milk powder was obviously more expensive than eating solid food, aka rice.
 
And also the frequent 995 calls and hospital stays...

We engage a maid to take care of his feeding and daily chores.  We need to work and my mother is old and it is too taxing for her to take up the role of caregiver.

Sadly he passed away this year.  Although the family know that it is a relief for him, but we do not feel less pain and always have a regret that we did not take care of him sufficiently enough before his stroke.

2. Closer Family Bonding

One good thing from my father's sickness is the closer family bonding between my siblings, myself and my mother.

3. Debt-free

I have finally reached debt-free country on my financial journey.  Although it was four year later than my original plan because of my father's sickness, but I have no regret on this.

4. Investment

My investment in the past was haphazard and I did not have proper checks and recording of my buys/sells, dividends received, etc.  In 2013, I chanced upon a fellow blogger's blog (Dividend Warrior) and he inspired me on the dividend strategy on investment.

I retrieved my CDP letters from 2012 and created an excel record.  The following is my progress so far:

a. Portfolio value

I have doubled my portfolio value from $80K in 2012 to $160K at 2014 Christmas, by investing into dividend paying stocks.  Of course, the next doubling will not be that easy.    

b. Dividends collected

Dividends collected increased from $3k+ in 2012 to $6k+ in 2014.  Still, there is still a long way to go on the road to achieving financial freedom. 

5. Blogging World

On the blogging world, I have more visitors to my blog and more interactions in 2014.  Overall the experience are good and I really learnt a lot from sharing with fellow bloggers. Some experience are bad too.  

Although I shared my portfolio on my blog, this is for my own record of my journey. I do not expect others to follow as I have said earlier winner for one person could be a loser for another person.  

a.  Do Your Own Due Diligence

And I have not showed my CDP statement, everything could be just my fantasy. All fellow investors need DYODD before parting with your own hard earned money.  Do not believe anything blindly on Internet.

I may buy certain stocks rationally or irrationally. Do not ask me to justify why I buy certain stocks.  As I have mentioned before, I have more than 50% holdings starting with the letter "S", so I may buy something simply because it starts with the letter "S".

b. Risk Tolerance Level

Everyone has different risk tolerance level.  After suffered 100% loss on my investment, I have always think that we should invest the money we can afford to lose.

Hence, I am numb to short-term market fluctuations and did not lose any sleep when Capitaland fell 50% from my initial investment amount or when SIA Engg fell from $5+ to $3+.

c. Moderation on comments

Some may notice that I have adopted moderation to the comments on my blog.  This is because someone had left nasty comments, which I have since deleted.

I do not understand why someone can spend time to write long nasty comment, but with moderation, I can simply click "delete" even without finishing the first sentence.

So, end of the long story for now.

Wishing everyone Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2015.