2013 objectives: Mid year review

Back in January i posted my financial and non financial goals for the year. I thought now would be a good time to see how i'm doing, six months on:

Financial goals:

1) Reduce cash balances towards a medium term target of 20% of total assets.
This hasn't gone too well, with cash balances actually rising to 36% following a couple of large one-offs. It isn't all that bad though, i've been adding regularly to my investment portfolio which has kept cash below 40%. As i'm averaging just over 2% income on my cash so there's no urgent need to decrease this. I'll just carry on investing as & when opportunities arise.

2) Maintain investment discipline.
Apart from one hiccup where i lost money on a more speculative preference share investment (getting greedy with yield) this has gone reasonably well.  Whilst gold, silver and a couple of ETFs are under water, overall the portfolio meets my goals of broad diversification and high yield. I am also seeing market dips as buying opportunities rather than panicking like i may have done in the past.

3) Achieving a high savings rate.
This is going very well, partly thanks to the one-offs earned early in the year.  My current year to date savings rate is around 75% and whilst this will decline through the second half of the year, it should still end up in the high 60s. Stripping out the one-offs my savings rate would be around the target 60%. I've enjoyed a few treats this year, but will be comfortable spending a bit more in the second half, given i'm well on track with this goal.

Non-financial goals:

1) Improve fitness
Well logging my diet & fitness failed terribly, but i have been getting to the gym around 2-3 times a week at least. I'll try to pick this up a bit for the rest of the year.

2) Improve work/life balance
Workload has been bad this year, worse than last year. Whilst it has been quite stressful i've managed to keep weekends free and have maintained a decent social life. I think i can do better switching off out of work and will make a bigger effort to do this.  I've also booked some time off for holidays in the second half of the year.

Overall, financially it has been a great start to the year, but there are definitely points here that i can improve on. Reading these objectives again has certainly helped to refocus for the rest of the year.