Is Money Causing You Stress? Read this book review:

After reading this book I felt that I had to share this information as I believe people’s health can be drastically affected by their financial situation. Especially when they have too much debt or too much month left at the end of their money. Money issues cause stress and marital arguments causing people’s health to decline like a domino effect. This is what I learned:

The underlying principles of the Total Money Makeover include several different tasks that eventually lead the person doing them to be debt free through a step by step system he has developed. In the first several chapters the author discusses how debt freedom can only be accomplished after certain behavior and beliefs towards debt and money are changed like denial, ignorance, believing money/debt myths, and keeping up with the Joneses (Ramsey, 2009). Many people try to make changes to their financial situation without first trying to find out why they are doing the things they are doing and then the changes do not last.

The next chapters set up how to build a strong financial foundation and the steps to take in order to accomplish that. Ramsey (2009) lists six initial steps to take which include the following:

1. Develop a household budget

2. Pay off any late accounts to get them current

3. Establish an emergency fund of at least $1000

4. Debt snowball: List all debts from lowest to highest and start paying them off in that order until they all have a zero balance (except for home mortgages). This is a lot like our

FREE Advocare Debtbuster System (Click on that link or ask me for more info)

1. Then increase the emergency fund to replace 6 months of expenses

2. Start saving the money used to pay debts to make cash purchases for needed items

After these initial steps are complete the author goes on to teach how to build wealth. The steps are easy to follow and each one is built upon completing the prior one completely. According to Ramsey (2009) people should use cash only and he does not believe in using credit for anything at all. The principles of Total Money Makeover are for everyone. I encourage you to do steps 1-6 above and let me know how you are doing.

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References

Ramsey, D. (2009). The total money makeover: A proven plan for financial fitness. Nashville,

TN: Nelson Inc.