I graduated from College with $100 in the bank, a new car with a 48-month loan, a 12-month apartment lease and a grown-up job that terrified me. As a newly minted college graduate, I was supposed to feel like I knew everything! Instead, I constantly felt like I would be exposed as a fraud who had no idea what she was doing.

By my early twenties, I was already well-versed in surviving on very little money. I was continuously employed by necessity from the summer before my senior year of high school, throughout all of college, and ended up working for twenty years, until my late thirties, when I “retired” to stay home with my little kids.

With the fear of so many things that grown up life entailed, coupled with the all-consuming desire to never again live with my parents, I willed myself to scrupulously save and strategically spend. Somehow in the years of my covetous devotion to thrift, I developed certain principles that have shaped the rest of my financial life. Those principles have allowed my husband and I to give faithfully and generously to our church, other ministries, and individuals in need. We’ve consistently donated our time and talent to a variety of ministries and the needs and interests of our kids. We paid down our mortgage, month by month, until we became debt free ten years ago. And we sent our kids to private school for ten years before sending them to college, so far debt free. In all this time since I retired, I’ve only had a job that paid me a corporate-level wage for two years, about five years ago.

How did we do it? Did we graduate from a Dave Ramsey or Crown Financial course? Nope. We followed these three principles:

Principle #1 – Disciplines. There were several things that we did, consistently, repeatedly, week after week, month after month, year after year. Little savings repeated over a lifetime add up to substantial savings. I would argue that this is a very biblical concept. After all, Zechariah 4:10 says that we are not to despise the day of small things. Small things done repeatedly and well become habit and expertise, and provide compounded interest in bank accounts.

Principle #2 – Specific techniques. There were several things I did all the time when my kids were little. For example, we went to a pediatric dentist more than thirty minutes from our home, which was near a children’s clothing outlet. For more than five years, I timed our dental visits to coincide with when this store had its biggest sales. After the kiddos’ teeth were cleaned, we headed over to the outlet store, often coming home with several huge bags of clothes for less than $200.

Principle #3 – Skills development. My first post about penny-pinching, Finding Joy in What is Creative and Simple, is one part Principle 2, one part Principle 3. When you sit down to relax, make it purposeful. Sure, it’s great to read a novel, or scroll through Social Media, but also make time to learn something new. For years, I never watched television unless I was also sewing or doing needlework. Until the last few years, my husband rarely watched television, except for the last thirty minutes before we went to bed. What did he do with his after-work time? In addition to coaching sports teams or sharing carpool duties, he’d head out to our garage where he designed and built things out of wood. This became his passion in his late twenties, and year after year, he has created and built not only beautiful furniture and gifts, but an additional skill set beyond what he does in his day job. He’s well known in our community for his craftsmanship, as well as his ability to repair and renovate for very low cost.

I’m excited to share many of the things we have done, and I encourage you to share the secrets of your financial success as well. Feel free to comment below or with the social media share of this post. We’re all blessed to be a blessing to others.