The Total Money Makeover: Review
The Total Money Makeover is considered to be one of the best books in the field of Personal Finance. The author, Dave Ramsay is famous for hosting his very own radio show. Many critics refer to this book, as the distillation of his philosophy, which was popular as ‘Dave Ramsay philosophy’, in to a very easy flowing, self-help book format. The writing style of the author can be compared more so with books like Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now and Steven Covey’s, 7 Habits of Effective People, as opposed to other usual personal finance books. While this book may fall a little short, when it comes to giving comprehensive, technical advice about personal finance. This is a go to book if you are looking for motivation and developing your non-verbal skills. Anyone who has been an ardent listener of Dave Ramsay’s radio show, would be well aware of the fact that he is a huge supporter of the ‘no debt’ perspective. In simple words, his philosophy is that one must pay for everything, using only cash. This very philosophy can be seen throughout the book, in turn reflecting all of Ramsay’s ideas and beliefs. This philosophy urges a person to save about a 1,000 units of currency, for instance a $1000 of INR 1000. This saving should be done as a part of an emergency fund, the next step would be then to pay off all of the debts, which a person may have. Once that is done, focus on building up the emergency fund, by adding more money for about a period of six months and then in similar fashion, saving more money to buy things and never having to take a loan. This book is dead set against the use of plastic money, which basically refers to any kind of credit or debit card. The first few chapters talk in detail about the psychological hurdles, which a person must overcome in order to begin the process of building up personal finances. This first part thoroughly revolves around the Dave Ramsay philosophy, where the reader is asked to ensure
that they never incur any debt. The book progresses in a very self-help book fashion, where it also deals with something called hurdles. These hurdles are basically the reasons why people tend to face issues when it comes to managing their personal finances. The first hurdle is denial, which basically the human psychology of avoiding a problem. Many people act like they have no idea of a financial problem, when in reality their finances are kind of failing. This way, people end up denying not only the possibility of a disaster, but also the very real possibility of financial success. The hurdle revolves around all the myths about debt. The author says that in the West, when it comes to debt, there is a very common mind set of considering it as a normal and healthy thing. The third hurdle deals with every kind of myth related to the issue of money. This book basically helps in making a person better at personal finance, which is a great addition to attending professional courses from institutes like Imarticus Learning.