This is not a meditation post, but you could meditate with these mantras. If you’re going to do that check out this meditation cushion, on sale at Target.

This post is about the money mantras I live by that have taken me from qualifying for Pell grants and working to put myself through college to investing in real estate and driving a nice car. Hopefully, these mantras inspire you to meet your financial goals.

Throughout the years, I always keep these ideas in mind when spending or earning any amount of money. I’ll describe each in further detail below.

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Money Mantras

1. (Almost) Never pay full price for anything.

I cringe when my friends tell me how much they’ve paid for some items because I know I have seen the exact same item or item of similar quality on sale for half the price. My friends wasted their money. They could have saved money on that purchase and invested the rest! Note that I have “Almost” in this mantra because there are some items that you can’t always buy on sale like most food items. Additionally, emergencies arise, and the product you need, in that instant, isn’t on sale. That being said, even when items aren’t on sale, it is usually possible to find the best price with the help of Google Shopping. Plus, most retailers have sales at certain times, and warehouse clubs have a pretty consistent pattern for special discounts. In my household, when we want to buy an item that cost over $100, and we don’t need it right away, we wait for the item to go on sale. Hence, we are pretty good at saving tens or hundreds of dollars on items that we want but don’t need right away. For example, we have gotten all of our Ninja appliances on sale at Costco or BJs and saved about $100 each. Another way that we save hundreds of dollars per year is by using a third-party mobile company. When I used one of the four main carriers, I had to pay all kinds of fees. Then I discovered Straight Talk who didn’t charge device fees, and I started saving $40/month. About 4 years ago, my husband and I switched to Xfinity Mobile, and we love it. We only pay $64/month for two lines of unlimited talk, text, and data. Xfinity uses Verizon towers, so we have fantastic coverage everywhere we go.

2. Pennies add up to dollars.

When I was old enough to understand money, probably in Kindergarten, my grandma taught me to always save half of any money I received. She also taught me how to never pay full price for anything, so I was usually able to get what I wanted and still save. To help me save, my grandma opened a savings account for me where I could deposit the money I was saving. She told me that my money was safer there than in a piggy bank and that it would earn interest. I was ecstatic that my money could earn money, and I didn’t have to work for it! Back then, my savings accounts were usually earning pennies in interest, but by the time I was ready to go to college, I had saved a few thousand dollars, on my own. I still get excited about earning pennies for little to no effort. I keep as much money as possible in a high-yield savings account like those offered through Alliant Credit Union. I also optimize my cashback opportunities through apps and credit cards, scan receipts, and I complete simple tasks, like watching ads, for a few pennies with rewards apps. Overtime all those pennies add up!

3. Use credit as an investment.

For the most part, you cannot invest unless you have good credit. Even getting a cell phone or auto insurance can require good credit. Thus, it’s important to treat credit as an investment and not as a loan or “free” money. I must have learned much of my financial literacy from my grandmother because as soon as I turned 18, she advised me to get a low-balance credit card, make a few purchases a couple times a year, and pay off the balance immediately. I still use that same Discover Card 20-something years later. Again, Grandma told me that if I didn’t pay off my credit card balance each month, I would owe interest, unlike with the interest I was earning in my savings account. She also told me that I needed to have good credit if I ever wanted to buy a house or a car, and she was right! Because of my grandma’s advice, and my solid understanding of interest rates (my math degree helped with that), I have never kept a high balance on any credit card. In recent years, I pay for almost everything with a cashback credit card. I have a few cards with different offers, so I try to earn 3% to 5% cashback on as many purchases as possible. Since I pay off my statement balance each month and pay no interest, I actually earn money. I use my credit cards as an investment, not a loan.

A few times, I have used cash advances or balance transfer offers to make big purchases when I didn’t have the cash. Then I set a monthly payment amount for those purchases, and I paid them off as quickly as possible to minimize the interest I would pay on those purchases. For example, when I first moved to NYC, I only had $500 in my bank account because I had just finished my undergraduate degree, with no student loans. I also only received a $1500 stipend from the NYC teaching fellows, so I had to figure out how to live in NYC for 3 months with only $2000. Luckily, I had opened a credit card with a low interest rate, and I had built up my credit during college, so I had a healthy credit limit. I maxed out that credit card with a low-interest cash advance offer so that I could rent an apartment and eat. I also started using rewards apps and mystery shopping to earn a little extra cash. Once, I started earning my teacher salary, I was able to pay off that credit card within a year. Even though I had to use my credit card as a loan, because I paid it off quickly, my credit score increased. That loan was also used to invest in my future. Another time, I paid off an auto loan with a credit card cash advance offer because the interest rate was lower than my car loan, and I could pay off the credit card balance faster than the loan term. In that case, I saved a few hundred dollars by using credit wisely. Those financial habits have stuck with me. Even though I accumulated student loans to pay for my living expenses while I earned my Ph.D., I invested some of that loan money into the stock market, a fuel-efficient car, and as a down payment on a house with my fiancé, now husband. My goal now is to maintain my investments and good credit score by paying off my debt as quickly as possible. Thus, why I decided to turn Doc’s Dealz into a side hustle to earn a little extra cash.

Speaking of investing in the stock market, if you’re interested in investing in the stock market, I plan to write another post with some basic tips. Until then, you can receive free stocks by using my referral links to Robinhood, Webull, Public, or Firsttrade. These apps are fun and totally free. If you want to be a serious investor, I recommend eTrade.

Thanks for reading. I hope that these mantras inspire you to be financially healthy.

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