The Total Money Makeover

In February, we visited my husband’s cousin and her family in Springfield, who are going through a Financial Peace University course at their church. My husband picked up their book and read a few pages. Who knew that this simple act would forever change the way we think about money.
Let me introduce Dave Ramsey. He’s a personal finance radio talk show host who has written several books, including Financial Peace and The Total Money Makeover. He abhors debt in all forms and has created a process with components he calls Baby Steps, to eliminate debt from one’s life and build wealth. As soon as we got home from Springfield, my husband and I started reading The Total Money Makeover. This particular book discusses many money myths before tackling the Baby Steps and above all, encourages readers to “live like no one else so you can live like no one else”—live cheaply now so you can enjoy your wealth later.

My husband and I feel like we were already conservative with our money, but we felt like we were never getting ahead—with money going towards student loans (our only debt now that the last car is paid off), retirement, and college funds, in addition to our regular bills and expenses, we never had any money left over to pay extra on our debts. Ramsey’s method involves focusing on paying down debts completely before funding retirement and college. Ramsey also demands that people create and stick to a budget, something we thought we were doing but not really (we always knew all the bills that had to be paid, but we didn’t track our grocery or household item purchases). So now we have a budget, we both know how much we can spend on certain categories in a month, and we are throwing all possible monies at our student loans, which we plan to have paid off in 2010.

I can’t really explain how much my thought processes towards money changed in the course of reading The Total Money Makeover. Things I had accepted before as fact (like we will always have debt) were blown out of the water. Planning and talking about money is no longer a chore that I shove off onto my husband; we are now both actively involved in the process and know exactly where our money is going. With Ramsey’s plan, I don’t feel like I now have to make more money, because I am making my current income work for my family. It has been an amazingly liberating, mind-changing experience, to say the least.

For a detailed review of The Total Money Makeover, click here. Ramsey's writing style really draws in the reader and makes covering the material enjoyable. If nothing else, you can start the book and give the process a chance. You might be surprised at how much your life can change when we aren't worried about money.