Personal Finance

Before I got married, I realized I was a grown up and needed to start providing for my family. One area of this that interested me was money. I read many books about personal finance, and I learned things but nothing gave a clear plan or convinced me of what to do. I'll go through some of these books and my thoughts.

David Bach - Teaches to automate saving, investing, and giving. He teaches to use automation to make things easy. For example, pay off your mortgage by having the mortgage company do automatic withdrawls.

Suse Orman - I read her book The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous & Broke, and I was more confused. She teaches people how to improve FICO scores and use debt 'wisely'. I liked this book at first, but I realized there were some problems. I'll go into those at a later time - but it amounts to she doesn't really say anything except how FICO scores work.

Robert Kiyosaki - Rich Dad, Poor Dad. This book is great. He talks about how owning a business, being an investor will lead to success. He is big on owning real estate. I like the philosophy of the book a lot.

A read a few other books, but none were notable. My brother recommended The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and I was hooked. This book offered a nearly complete plan of handling money and how various financial product like life insurance should be done. The plan is stop borrowing money, get out of debt, and the build wealth.

The other books are more palatable to most people because it means making small changes, but they also have small effects. The total money makeover can result in significant changes with huge results. Sacrificing to win is often required, and I agree that it is worth it. I soon read another book of his, Financial Peace, checked out his radio show, and learned about his more in depth course Financial Peace University.

After hearing his show and so many real life examples, I know that this is a plan anyone can do to be successful. On the other hand, the plan in the Automatic Millionaire might work for some people.

Another part of Dave's plan is to become a better person, this includes church life, marriage, family, work and many other aspects to your life. He recommends books on various topics.

more to come...