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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“A man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an opinion.”
Remember, your ways of handling money have to work in good times and in bad.
Winning at money is 80 percent behavior and 20 percent head knowledge. What to do isn’t the problem; doing it is.
If I can control the guy in the mirror, I can be skinny and rich.
IF YOU WILL LIVE LIKE NO ONE ELSE, LATER YOU CAN LIVE LIKE NO ONE ELSE.
Savings without a mission is garbage. Your money needs to work for you, not lie around you.
For your own good, for the good of your family and your future, grow a backbone. When something is wrong, stand up and say it is wrong, and don’t back down.
The enemy of “the best” is not “the worst.” The enemy of “the best” is “just fine.”
Most people won’t change until the pain of where they are exceeds the pain of change.
Being willing to delay pleasure for a greater result is a sign of maturity.
“There is no shortcut to anyplace worth going.”
If you truly want to help someone, give money. If you don’t have it, then don’t sign up to pay it, because you likely will.
Looking good is when your broke friends are impressed by what you drive, and being good is having more money than they have.
You have to reach the point that what people think is not your primary motivator. Reaching the goal is the motivator.
If you insist on driving new cars with payments your whole life, you will literally blow a life’s fortune on them. If you are willing to sacrifice for a while, you can have your life’s fortune and drive quality cars.
Your largest wealth-building asset is your income. When you tie up your income, you lose. When you invest your income, you become wealthy and can do anything you want.
living right is not complicated; it may be difficult, but it is not complicated.
Things won’t be okay unless you make them that way. Your destiny and your dignity are up to you.
the best quote on budgeting I have ever heard. I wish I had said it: “A budget is people telling their money where to go instead of wondering where it went.”
So all those years and tears later, when it was no longer the driving force of my approval rating, God allowed a Jaguar back into my life. He returned what the locusts had eaten, but He only did so when it was not my idol. Rumor has it that God doesn’t like us to have other gods in our lives.
A lot of couples forfeit working together on their budgets, and one always ends up pushing and nagging the other. It is so important to work with each other from the very beginning! It might seem boring, but we’ve turned our regular budget/calendar meetings into enjoyable, future-planning dates!
“What does it take to succeed on a big scale? A tremendous God-given talent? Inherited wealth? A decade of postgraduate education? Connections? Fortunately for most of us, what it takes is something very simple and accessible: clear, written goals.”
According to Brian Tracy, a study of Harvard graduates found that after two years, the 3 percent who had written goals achieved more financially than the other 97 percent combined!
If you’re married, agree on the budget with your spouse. This one sentence requires a stand-alone book to describe how, but the bottom line is this: if you aren’t working together, it is almost impossible to win. Once the budget is agreed on and is in writing, pinky-swear and spit-shake that you will never do anything with money that is not on that paper. The paper is the boss of the money, and you are the boss of what goes on the paper, but you have to stick to the budget, or it’s just an elaborate theory.
Sacrifice has had its place in our budgeting wants and desires, but it is completely worth it. We remind ourselves that delaying a purchase doesn’t mean we will never have it.
This emergency fund is not for buying things or for vacation; it is for emergencies only. No cheating.
Whether the emergency is real or just poor planning, the cycle of dependence on credit cards has to be broken. A well-planned budget for anticipated things and an emergency fund for the truly unexpected can end dependence on credit cards.
If a real emergency happens, you have to handle it with your emergency fund. No more borrowing! You have to break the cycle.
What if you are at Baby Step Two in the next chapter and you use $300 from your emergency fund to fix the alternator? If this happens, stop Step Two and return to Step One until the full $1,000 is replenished. Once your beginner emergency fund is funded again, you can return to Step Two. Otherwise, you will gradually do away with this small buffer and be back to old habits of borrowing to cover real emergencies.
The Debt Snowball is designed the way it is because we are more concerned with modifying behavior than correct mathematics.
If you think this Debt Snowball stuff is cute and you might sort of give it a try, it won’t work. Total, sold-out, focused intensity is required to win. Aiming at the goal and nothing else is the only way to win. You have to know where you are going, and by definition know where you aren’t going, or you will never get there.
Around our office, the counselors can predict who will make it out of debt based on how “gazelle-intense” they are. If they are looking at a red line on the refrigerator door and yelling, they have a really good shot. However, if they are looking for a get-rich-quick scheme or some intellectual theory instead of sacrifice, hard work, and total focus, we give them a really low gazelle rating and a low probability of becoming debt-free.
I’m often asked, “Dave, should I cut my cards up now or when I pay them off?” Cut them up NOW. A permanent change in your view of debt is your only chance. No matter what happens, you have to pursue the opportunity or solve the challenge without debt. It has to stop. If you think you can get out of debt without huge resolve to stop borrowing, you are wrong. You can’t get out of a hole by digging out the bottom.
Growth and Income funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Large Cap or Blue Chip funds.) Growth funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Mid Cap or Equity funds; an S&P Index fund would also qualify.) International funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Foreign or Overseas funds.) Aggressive Growth funds get the last 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Small Cap or Emerging Market funds.) For a full discussion of what mutual funds are and why I use this mix, go to daveramsey.com/mutual-funds and
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