The Total Money Makeover PDF Download Free

Jordan E. “Dave Ramsey cannot do Math. Misinformation abounds in this book. First, Ramsey’s famous “12% market return”. This is a false number, and even if he used the correct number for the S&P since it’s inception (10%), it’s not adjusted for inflation. *Real* market returns (the increase in actual value in today’s dollars) are between 6 and 8 percent (see Warren Buffet). Ramsey does some truly spectacular math with this B.S. number, including the statement that if you invested $3600 instead of prepaying for your own funeral you would end up with almost half a million dollars. That’s outright deceptive. There’s plenty of these nuggets throughout the book. Lines such as “you cannot pay off your student loans while in school” (you can, payments just aren’t *required* while in school) are a good example. Or that you can securely withdraw 8% of your nest egg and still see an annual 4% return. This advice is outright dangerous, because the actual value you can withdraw safely in perpetuity is around 3%. That’s how volatile markets and inflation work. Withdraw 8% of your principal per year and you will run out of money.

His statements on debt are also questionable, especially student debt. The message is “don’t do it!”. This might make economic sense for an arts major, but for an engineering/STEM major, debt truly is an instrument. Your increase in salary for the first few years post-graduation alone makes it economical.”

Janell Michaels “I grabbed this book because I was tired of watching our bank account drain and credit card balances rise, all the while wondering where the heck our money was going. And quite simply put, this changed everything for us within the first month.

The “makeover” is a set of 7 baby steps, but before the steps comes the cornerstone of the whole program: a written budget and a cash envelope system. The book covers why you need a written budget, and boy, it was true for us. Sure, I had a mental idea of what our bills were. But writing everything out let me see ALL the little things I tend to forget about, and how quickly they add up. The book helped us make a “zero based” budget, meaning we earmarked every dollar coming in for a specific purpose (rent, groceries, gasoline, etc.) Then comes the cash envelope system, which helped us make an immediate 180-degree turnaround on our spending. The book covers why cash is better than plastic (debit as well as credit), as well as how to create cash envelopes for each spending category and stuff them with the budgeted amounts. No more accidental overspending!

The rest of the book goes over the baby steps, a systematic, do-these-in-order money tasks to kill debt and build wealth. Each step’s chapter also includes personal success stories. Honestly, you can learn the steps without this book either from the Dave Ramsey website, or even better, from watching the metric TON of YouTube videos on his channel. He does a daily show where people call in with money problems, and he uses this method to solve them. That practical, real-world advice has taught me a lot about this system. But I like having this book handy on my Kindle as a reference, plus the info given about each individual step goes more in-depth than the website.

To sum up, if you own Financial Peace University, Dave’s other money books, or are a die-hard YouTube viewer, there’s likely nothing new here. But if you’re new to the system or want a written reference to go along with his videos, this might well be the one to get in order to cover the basics. I was desperate and at wit’s end, terrified of the retirement future staring me in the fact in the next decade or so. Now, I can see a bright financial future ahead, and we have a plan. I can’t say enough about this program!”