Leadership Library Spotlight

by Adam McCune on Feb 12th, 2010 at 2:38 am

Book: Financial Peace Revisited
Author: Dave Ramsey

"Our entire nation is in financial stress at the individual level, at the city level, and state level, and at the national level…. I intend for this chapter … to get you mad. I want you mad enough to change your life and mad enough to change your children’s lives – and mabye even mad enough to change your city or your country."
- Dave Ramsey, p. 13

This book cost me $35,000 and it remains one of the best bargains in my entire library.

I grew up with very little financial literacy and discovered the hard way that most of my financial counselors (friends of the same age) were equally ignorant of how true wealth was acquired. I don’t blame my friends. We were not taught personal finance in high school or college beyond the level of understanding how to balance a checkbook, embracing the “value” of taking on student loans, and how to keep a establish a good credit score (which is impossible without first adding debt to your portfolio). We were all doomed and too blind to the realities of money to know it.

God blessed me with a father who worked his backside off to help me graduate college without a penny of debt and then I showed my gratefulness by purchasing a car for a “low monthly payment” of $365 a month, which ended up costing me $6,000 more than a cash payment up front. Then, I married a wonderful woman who matched my $18,000 of debt with $17,000 of her own.

Within two years of our marriage, we were getting nowhere fast and I happened upon a radio program from Dave Ramsey. Inspired by his passion for sound financial management, which was coupled by personal experience and a heart to honor God with all of his own possessions, I got this book. A year after that, we wrote our last check to the bank and have spent the last two and a half years without any debt to our name and workable plan for the future.

Gentlemen, we either own our money or it owns us. We are either its sovereign or its servant. If we are in debt then we are most likely serving our money before we serve our Lord. Don’t believe me? Just quit your job and see how long it takes before those pleasant loan officers take all you have and ruin your reputation. You must work to pay debt, therefore, you serve it. The sooner you learn to abandon debt from the habits of your financial lives and the sooner you investigate Dave Ramsey’s solid advice about how to build true wealth, the sooner you will experience true financial freedom.

Just think about these thoughts for a moment:

Debt prevents true generosity. The bank always gets its cut first.
Debt erodes your leadership credibility. Your wife will struggle with her sense of security when you so “wisely” take wealth and generate poverty with it.
Debt weakens national security. Always has, always will. Our personal habits contribute to the weakening of our own communities and nations.
Money problems contribute to many divorces and serve as points of contention with marriage.
Solid financial principles, when put in action, free you from the burden of making money to serving God, your family, and your community.
Solid financial principles increase your leadership credibility. A happy wife is a happy life!
Solid financial principles, when applied, free you to unleash generosity upon your family, friends, strangers, and for those who are laboring hard in ministry. Debt can’t do that.

I believe that Dave Ramsey’s resource can be a challenge to your financial state of mind even if you disagree with some of his points. He is not promoting the love of money nor is he writing as if to say that being rich is a key indicator of God’s pleasure with us. Not everyone will survive economic hardships intact and there are times when even the best of financial leaders lose everything because of unforeseen troubles. He recognizes this, but calls the rest of us to accountability for the economic responsibilities we are supposed to carry out for our families, communities, and countries.

Maybe you can buy this book for less than $35,000; maybe you will pay more. Either way, you’ll probably find that it is worth the cost.

P.S. You can find the link to Dave Ramsey’s site in our links page, under the category of “Money.” It’s worth a look.