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.