With 2016 coming to a close, I decided to take a look at how I fared this year and whether I had met the financial goals I'd set for myself. When I first started this blog as a financial notebook to keep an account of all my learnings on this personal finance journey, my initial focus in 2014 was all about cutting down expenses and maximising my savings. In 2015, I achieved my goals of growing my savings and cleaning up my insurance policies, but did really badly on the investment portion due to timing. I'd made the mistake of being impatient to start, and used up my savings in the first half of the year, only to see huge paper losses after when the oil and China crisis hit. My stock performance were horrendous. Other financial bloggers encouraged me by saying those were "school fees" that "people pay ......