Book Review: "The Total Money Makeover" By: Dave Ramsey

            It is a distinct honor and privilege to provide my book review today. For me, this is the book that changed everything in my life. This gave me the power to stand on my own two feet, live as a responsible adult, and change my life for the better. The information in this book literally transformed my life and it will do no less for you. Dave Ramsey’s “The Total Money Makeover” is the one book that we all should have read and studied during school before we were unleashed into the real world. But thankfully, even for those of us that are already adults and have experienced stupid with 0’s on the end, this book gives the written game plan on how to turn your financial life around for the positive.

            Dave does an absolutely outstanding job in transitioning from real world true life examples, to the x’s and o’s, to dispelling popular money myths. My favorite money myth that gets shattered is the tax advantage of paying interest on your mortgage vs. living debt free. The myth is that it is a good decision to keep your mortgage for the tax deduction. The truth, we are paying $10,000 in interest annually to our lender rather than paying $3,000 to the government and keeping $7,000 for ourselves. The book is filled with gems like this one that will turn your views on credit completely upside down and rock your world.           

            Now I have probably read this book close to 50 times over the last two and a half years, but every time it puts a smile on my face and reassures me of the path that I am heading down and choosing for myself. Of course the memories of reading it for the first time are still very vivid in my mind. About ¾ of the book beginning from the front cover, challenged me and presented such a plethora of information that conflicted with how I thought smart personal finance worked that I had to re-read a lot of sections over and over again. The information is presented clearly and concisely, I just needed to get my brain on the same wavelength. The layout of the book, that ¼ of it covers the baby steps, really drives home the point that smart personal financial decisions are 80% behavior and 20% head knowledge. The KISS method also fits the bill (keep it simple…STUPID!!). So to the financial goobers who bemoan that Dave’s method is way too simple I’ll say this: I got out of debt, live on a budget and keep my investing style extremely simple and I LOVE IT! To everyone else, if you read one book in 20 years, let this be the one, it will rock your world!