Remember when I said, “pennies turn into dollars?” Well, this blog post is dedicated to what I did with pennies I saved last year.
At the beginning of each year, I sit down and count all the change I earned during the previous year. After I count my change, I plan out a way to turn them into some dollars.
This year, I decided that I was going to take my first step towards micro-investing beyond the regular 401K plan. And today I’m dishin’ all about it. Plus, I’m sharing a few tips on how you can get started with your investing too. And yes. All it takes is a few pennies to get started.
3 Ways I Earned “Pennies” for Micro-Investing
It’s no secret. I’m all for picking up a penny I find on the street. However, loose change on the street wasn’t my main strategy to earn my pennies last year. My change collection came from three major sources:
1. Cash Back Rewards (Passive Savings)
I saved all the cash back rewards I earned from my credit card purchases last year. Every month, I cashed out my rewards and deposited them into my savings account. I averaged about $40 a month, which doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but it does grow. And because the money from my cash back rewards weren’t itemized in my budget, it was easy to move the money over to my savings without missing it.
2. Spare Change from Cash Transactions
There are also a few perks to using cash instead of a credit card. One of them is taking that loose change after breaking a dollar and saving it in a jar. So, that’s exactly what I did. Walking around with a bunch of change in your wallet makes it too heavy and clunky anyway.
3. Passive Website Ad Income
Each month I earned about $17 on my website ads on Pupcake Sugar. Now, can I retire off that income? Nope. But I can take that money, invest it, and grow it into something greater. Plus, I earned that $17 a month while sleeping and going about my daily business. So, I didn’t have to do anything extra to earn these pennies.
4 Ways I Invested My Spare Change (Real Examples)
Ok. So, after I counted all my change, I was ready to make it grow. I figured investing these coins was a great way to kick-off my investment journey without feeling like I had come up with some extra cash to do so.
January is also a great time to reset our mindsets around money. This year I’m setting it on growth and abundance. Here are the four ways I invested my funds to kick off the new year.
1. Reinvesting in My Business (Business License)
The first investment I made was in my business. I have to renew my business license every year. So, I reinvested some of the pennies I earned from my website ads back into my Pupcake Sugar business license. Not only does it allow me to keep working on my brand, but it also gives me the opportunity to reinvest in my creativity. Pupcake Sugar is also my way of taking what I’ve learned and helping you find ways to invest in yourself and your dog.
2. Buying S&P 500 Index Shares
Outside of a retirement plan, I’ve never done any type of investing. So, since I have a little extra change, I decided this was the year for me to start my investment portfolio. I took a portion of the pennies I saved and bought some shares of the S&P 500 index. I thought this might be a good beginner’s step towards investing.
3. Funding a Pet Health Savings Account
Health is wealth. Investing in Sugar’s care is one of the most important investments I ever can make. So, I set aside a little change into Sugar’s pet health savings account. Having money saved up for her healthcare reduces my stress levels and helps me make more intentional decisions about her care without worrying about how I’m going to pay for it.
4. Investing in Financial Education (Books)
I wanted to learn more about investing. I heard about the book, The Intelligent Investor, so I bought it. I was excited to start until I read the first page. It reads like a textbook. The kind that your teacher wants you to read right after lunch. I fell asleep trying to read it. So, I bought the audio book with my last few pennies to buy the audio book. I’m listening to one chapter a day, which has helped me break down the information into micro-lessons.
How to Start Investing for Beginners (Stress-Free Guide)
I’m not going to lie. Researching different investing strategies is like drinking from the firehouse. It can be intimidating to try to find out where to start.
Especially, when Sugar’s pawing my leg while I scroll through the computer to find information. So, I created my own investment learning plan. Here are four ways I got started.
1. Read Accessible Finance Books
My mentor recommended the book The Richest Man in Babylon. It’s short, sweet, and uncomplicates the idea of building wealth. I read a chapter each night and finished the book in five days. The main idea of the book is that money should be directed with intention, wealth is a marathon, and my grandparents knew how to work a dollar. Ok. That last one was my interpretation.
2. Pick a Small Financial Goal
Instead of focusing on achieving the big money goals, I stuck to focusing on the small consistent goals. Which is why I’m choosing to work on saving 2,000 pennies per week. Small goals help build discipline, which will help me with achieving the bigger goals down the road.
3. Research Investing 10 Minutes a Day
Doing a quick Google search on a topic, reading an article about investing, or listing to a podcast about money investing helps. Ten minutes is enough to learn one new term without drinking from that firehose. It also helps me retain information. So, I decided to spend 10 minutes a day learning something new about investing.
4. Align Investments with Your Values
Our values determine the way we spend our money. So, before I invested in anything, I sat down to reflect and align my values to my new investment plan by asking myself the following questions.
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Why do you want to invest?
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What do you want freedom to feel like?
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What timeline supports your real life—not the internet’s?
Dog Mom Math Rule #4: The Power of Micro-Investing
After dividing my pennies, I realized that we don’t need a lot of money to start investing. We just need to make the decision to start.
The thing I love about Dog Mom Math Rule #4: “Big purchases pay for themselves over time,” is that it encourages micro-investing. Here’s how we can apply this rule to investing our pennies.
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Treat Investing as a Long-Term Utility: Investing is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s about looking at the value in the future. The payoff of investing is never immediate but grows over time. For instance, a penny today could be worth a nickel in a few years. So, keep those pennies compounding.
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Turn Micro-Investing into a System: Dog Mom Math is about building consistency. Making small investments will grow overtime. Turning micro-investing in your strategy also reduces the feeling that you have “wait until you’re ready to invest” to start. In fact, with apps like Acorns, Robinhood, and Stash micro-investing is a business model.
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Let Time Do the Heavy Lifting (Compound Interest): In Dog Mom Math, time is an asset. Playing the long game means you’re not trying to time the market, optimize every decision, and outperform anyone else. Dog Mom Math encourages you to make the best investing decision for yourself and determine how much time you’ll need to meet your goal.
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Invest with Care, Not Comparison: Dog Mom Math helps you structure decisions that support you and your dog’s life. Not what someone else is doing. It’s all about being intentional about your investment decisions.
Small Steps Lead to Big Growth
So, let’s get back to these pennies. I’m not gonna lie. I never thought about how powerful some loose change in a jar could be until a few years ago.
Being intentional about my changed helped me be thankful for the little things. It also taught me that small steps lead to bigger achievements as long as I stay disciplined and consistent. So, bring on the pennies. We got some investing to do.
Now we’d love to hear from you. How are you investing your pennies?
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