Bryan Alderfield

The Feeling of Control The benefits of pursuing FIRE extend well beyond the financial. And they start well before you finally hand in your resignation long before your peers. One of the first benefits to arise is a sense…

The benefits of pursuing FIRE extend well beyond the financial. And they start well before you finally hand in your resignation.

One of the first benefits to arise is...

yourdailyficom.wordpress.com/2025/05/17/t...

A Few Key Concepts for the Current Environment The Behavior Gap: Popularized by Carl Richards, this is the difference between an investment’s returns over a certain period and the actual returns an investor in that investment earns due to their…

Here are three key investing concepts that are super relevant in the current market environment

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Here's a surprising behavior that will help you learn to spend less

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When the Plan Doesn’t Go According to Plan A lot of FIRE adherents get stressed out when their plan hits a speed bump. Some unexpected but unavoidable expense arises. A move becomes necessary. A job is lost. Usually, they see the solution t…

A lot of FIRE adherents get stressed out when their plan hits a speed bump.

Instead of freaking out, here's what to do...

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The Benefit of Less I’ll confess that part of my motivation for this blog is to convince people that they can live with less. And not just that they can live with less, but that they’ll be happier and better off livin…

On the benefits of less

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Abundance It’s easy in the boring middle of pursuing FIRE to fixate on all the spending you’ve given up. The clothes and cars you didn’t buy. The vacations you didn’t take. The nights out that you passed up …

If you find yourself languishing in the boring middle of pursuing FIRE, here's something to try

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Some Perspective Building on yesterday’s post, keep in mind that that 99 percent of the humans that have ever lived would love to have the problems we have today. Our nagging discomforts, our psychological it…

If you're in the boring middle of pursuing financial independence, and you're feeling a nagging discomfort, a psychological itch, or some indefinable malaise, remember this...

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Timeless Advice, Plus an Addition Let’s start with some timeless advice from Mr. Money Mustache: “If you find you don’t have enough money to pay the bills or to afford something you really want, the solution is not borrowing the mo…

Let's start with some classic FIRE advice, plus my two cents...

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Your Best Cheap Meal A helpful arrow to have in your frugality quiver is at least one super cheap meal that you absolutely love. For us, it’s tofu, noodles, broccoli, and homemade miso hot pepper sauce. A full plate pr…

Here's a key arrow to have in your frugality quiver

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More on AI Managers are going to be reflexively suspicious of workers who push back on the idea that AI will be useful in their field. The obvious suspicion is that these people see AI as a threat, fear that …

If you're worried about AI affecting your job, here's one thing to definitely NOT do

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Free Tuition Most workplaces offer a variety of training and upskilling opportunities. Take advantage of these. A lot of these programs are geared toward company-specific tasks. While they aren’t necessarily po…

There's a free benefit your employer is probably offering that you're not taking advantage of

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AI Proof I’ve been noodling around with AI for a few months now. While the technology is obviously impressive compared to the world I grew up in, I don’t think too many jobs are at risk just yet. I can see …

Three ideas about how to AI-proof your job

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Take the Time Here’s a non-controversial idea: If you want to improve your physical health, you have to spend some time working to improve it. You need to go to the gym to lift weights or walk or run outside. An…

There's one obvious thing that we do when we're trying to improve any aspect of our lives, that we mysteriously skip when we attempt to boost our finances

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A Few Questions What in your life would you never trade for any amount of money? How much time do you spend enjoying or nurturing that thing? What non-monetary thing would you like to leave behind after you die? H…

If you've got some mental free time this weekend, here are six important questions to ask yourself to make sure your money and your values are lining up

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Too Good to be True Nowhere should you be more suspicious of “too good to be true” deals than in the financial realm. Con artists operate by finding people desperate to hear something and then telling them that exact …

Nowhere should you be more suspicious of “too good to be true” deals than in the financial realm

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Decide for Yourself Forget everything you ever learned about personal finance. Forget every blog post or book you’ve ever read, anything your parents ever told you about money, and anything any advertisements ever tri…

Forget everything you ever learned about personal finance.

Forget every blog post or book you’ve ever read, anything your parents ever told you about money, and anything any advertisements ever tried to sell you.

Now answer this question:

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Tax Time If you are getting a tax return this year, resolve to invest at least some of it in your financial independence fund. How much you invest depends on your individual situation, but I tend to think m…

A key financial move to start thinking about this time of year

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Find a Why Not every day at work is going to feel like a significant, fulfilling episode of your life journey. But when you find yourself in a slump, trudging through the days, try to generate some motivation…

Feeling like you're in a slump at work? Here's a practice I use to snap out of it

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Plain Language If someone is trying to sell you an investment product and can’t explain in plain, simple language why it will benefit you, be careful. If you want to invest in a company or sector, but can’t expla…

If someone is trying to sell you an investment product and can’t explain in plain, simple language why it will benefit you, be careful.

If you want to...

yourdailyficom.wordpress.com/2025/03/23/p...

Journal Writers will often tell you that they don’t know what they’re thinking until they write it down. I’m like this. You might be like this as well, even if you’re not a writer. Try a few days of journa…

The power of journaling about your financial strategy

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The Gift of Presence It’s hard to be present when you you’re worried about money. I’ve been there. There’s a background hum that drowns out what should be joyful moments. There’s a baseline of stress that robs you of r…

It’s hard to be present when you you’re worried about money.

yourdailyficom.wordpress.com/2025/03/18/t...

Chef Time A non-obvious benefit of the skills you acquire on the road to financial independence is the ability to go beyond what you’ve learned. For example, about half of the dishes I make in a week won’t a…

A non-obvious benefit of the skills you acquire on the road to financial independence is the ability to go beyond what you’ve learned.

Here's what I mean...

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Go All the Way Sometimes, instead of reducing spending on a category, try eliminating it entirely. Instead of reducing how much takeout you buy, go three months without buying any. Don’t buy clothes for a year. C…

Sometimes, instead of reducing spending on a category, try eliminating it entirely.

For example...

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The Right Fights Channel your effort, your energy, and your emotions to the most productive purposes. Don’t host arguments in your mind against people you’ll never meet. Don’t alienate coworkers when working togeth…

Channel your effort, your energy, and your emotions to the most productive purposes.

Here are five behaviors that will prevent you from doing that:

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Reading Let’s talk about the entertainment value of reading. The average book takes about 14 hours or so to get through. This number can be much higher for genres like fantasy. The cost of reading can be z…

Let’s talk about the entertainment value of reading...

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The Good Kind of Inflation Following on yesterday’s post, the value of your skills will go up over time. Because of inflation, home repairs will get more expensive. Haircuts will get more expensive. Restaurants will charge m…

You know, there's one kind of inflation that's not so bad...

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Learning new skills is important for reaching FIRE, even if...

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College Economics I used to scoff at the idea of skipping college as a way the better path to building wealth. The idea was to save the tuition, teach yourself to code or start businesses, and gain real world experi…

I used to scoff at the idea of skipping college as the better path to building wealth.

Now I'm not so sure. Here's why

yourdailyficom.wordpress.com/2025/02/24/c...

In Praise of Batch Cooking I’m not the first FIRE blogger to sing the praises of batch cooking, and I’m sure I won’t be the last. It’s entirely true that cooking big trays of food to divvy up as lunches for the week or to st…

There's a hidden benefit of batch cooking that a lot of FIRE adherents miss...

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Here's a fun exercise to give you a little boost on the path to financial independence: Pick a category of expense and budget zero dollars for it for the month.

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