(Photo : Reuters)

Early retirement is one of the goals of almost everybody. It takes lots of sacrifices and intense dedication to become self-made millionaires regardless of how much money you start with.

There is no age limit and age requirement to start becoming financially responsible. It takes a lot of time to successfully handle resources and make it work for you to achieve your goals.

The growth of the FIRE Movement (Financial Independence Retire Early Movement) is becoming a good inspiration to everyone who is aiming for financial freedom. 

Early retirees are people who had attained enough financial freedom to make their money work for them while enjoying more time for themselves and their loved ones.

Not everyone is blessed with enough cash to start with any business venture or career. There are many methods on how someone can get to earn millions through their hard work and connections.

The following are some pieces of advice given by self-made millionaires and early retirees on how to achieve financial freedom:

1. Calculating Net Worth and Recording Yearly Expenses

A self-made millionaire will not let a year start without calculating their expected earnings for the following year and the expenses they will be spending the following year. 

They consider different factors in creating estimates for their earnings and expenses. One of which is their current year's expenses and earning and starting from there in creating next year's plans.

2. Frugally Spend Money

Those who become self-made millionaires are frugal and do their best to spend less. 

Some early retirees had shared that they do not spend money excessively by reducing the number of times they eat out, own one car with their spouse. 

Some also shared that they reduced the number of times they visit the grocery stores and avoided eating out during the weekdays to spend less every month. 

3. Save on Housing-Related Expenses

Some self-made millionaires effectively cut their yearly cost on housing and save tons of money for years. 

An example of this is when despite the increase of income of a husband and wife, they still decided not to upgrade to a bigger and better house. This increased their earnings and not their spending.

4. Looking for Opportunities to Increase Earnings

Being a self-made millionaire does not only require proper handling of expenses. It also requires a person to find other sources of income to increase their monthly or yearly earnings. 

One way to increase monthly or yearly earnings is to start part-time gigs related to currently existing skills, transfer to a higher-earning career, learning new skills for part-time gigs, and negotiating with employers to increase monthly salaries.

5. They Save Raises and Don't Spend Them

After negotiating with the employer for a salary increase, the raise of those who became self-made millionaires were saved and not spent. 

The raises that they received were directly deposited to their bank accounts and continue to accumulate through the years.

Saving money and monitoring of expenses is a challenging task because of the presence of different temptations to spend. One must be strong-willed to focus on his or her goals to achieve financial freedom and earn their first millions. 

Once the advice provided above becomes a habit, it will become much easier through the years and early retirement will likely come your way.