Steve Adcock doesn't miss watching SportsCenter as much as he thought he would.
When Adcock made the decision to pursue FIRE — short for "financial independence, retire early" — he knew he'd have to increase his savings rate as much as possible by cutting back on expenses. The cable package was one of the first things to go.
"I used to think I couldn't live without ESPN," he tells CNBC Make It. "But then we cut cable, and guess what? I'm still here. I'm still living and breathing without ESPN."
Adcock retired from his corporate gig in 2016 at age 35 with about $900,000. These days, his net worth is north of $1 million, and he offers financial advice to would-be early retirees in his newsletter, Millionaire Habits.
When pursuing financial independence, the process of cutting out some of the things that make you happy is painful, but ultimately worth it, Adcock says.
"The hardest part is getting over that initial hump of ... 'Oh, I can't live without this,'" he says. "You have to think, 'I want to achieve this, so I'm no longer going to spend money on that.' Once you've made that decision, everything becomes so much easier."
Here's how Adcock says you can take the plunge.
Track your spending
You're not going to know where to cut your budget unless you keep track of your spending — another aspect of pursuing FIRE that Adcock acknowledges can be difficult.
"There is no way you're going to improve your spending without knowing where your money is going to begin with," he says. "It requires going through your bank statements, going through your credit card statements and categorizing your expenses for the last two or three months. That can be a pain in the a--."
It's not just the hours on Excel that's tough. "I think a lot of people implicitly know that they're overspending and don't want to admit it to themselves. They don't want to know how much they're spending," Adcock says.
But once you look your budget in the face, you'll have an easier time trimming it, especially if you're surprised by where your money was going, Adcock says. "Sometimes it's like, 'Holy s---, I'm spending $500 a month at Subway.'"
Work backward
Rather than trying to figure out every little line item to cut, start with your overall financial goal and work backward, Adcock suggests.
Say you want to retire early in 10 years. You're going to need a certain number to accomplish your goal. One shorthand many early retirees rely on — their "FIRE number" — multiplies the annual income they hope to live on in retirement by 25. From there, you can roughly calculate the percentage of your salary you'd need to invest on a yearly basis to hit the number in a decade.
"Once you have those numbers, you can work backward to figure out how much you can spend every month," Adcock says. "Then once you have that number, you can break things out into categories: spending on food, on your cell phone, on clothes, on rent, on entertainment."
Having that understanding of exactly what you can afford can help keep you from feeling as if you're depriving yourself.
'Understand what's necessary to you'
Cutting back on your spending may mean having to forego some things that used to be part of your social life. Adcock recalls cutting back on how much he was going out for drinks with friends, for instance.
To avoid feeling guilty that you're cutting back, or not treating yourself the way you used to, it can be useful to think about how expenses impact your personal goals.
"It's about understanding what's necessary to you," Adcock says. "I would tend to think of every expense as a delay to reaching that goal. If you have a goal of retiring in 10 years, that vacation might keep you working for another six months. Is that worth it?"
It's not a rhetorical question. Say you have a ritual of getting manicures and pedicures with your friends, and it's something that brings you joy and confidence. Over the next decade, the collective cost of those treatments could keep you working another three months. And that might be entirely worth it to you.
"If it's important enough to you to continue spending, do it. If it's not, cut back," says Adcock.
And remember: Pursuing FIRE may not be worth it if it's going make you miserable all the time. You have to find a balance.
"A lot of people outside the FIRE community think we live these boring lives, that we don't do anything because we don't want to spend any money," Adcock says. "That's not true at all. You absolutely have to have fun."
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