Category Archives: money

America’s Favorite Finance Coach

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NewYorkTimes.com

Many people have a New Year’s resolution to manage their money more effectively. Dave Ramsey can certainly help you do that.

Bestselling author of The Total Money Makeover, he is a no-nonsense bloke that has become the Go-To-Guy regarding budgeting as well as helping parents teach their children how to handle their finances. The book, published by Thomas Nelson, has sold over six million copies. Consequently, he’s a Subject Matter Expert on the topic of finance.

Working out of Brentwood, Tennessee (near Nashville), he hosts a radio program that reaches 14 million listeners per week via over 600 stations. As a result, he was named the 2009 Marconi Award winner for Network/Syndicated Personality of the Year, and was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2015. Likewise, his daughter, Rachel Cruze, is also a New York Times bestselling author.

Background & Ideology

First of all, he claims that when he was in his 20’s he was “dumber than a rock.” In fact, he says he has a PhD in D-U-M-B. In the ‘80’s he was over-invested in real estate and went bankrupt. Rather than throw up his hands in surrender, he became even more determined to figure out how to live within his means.

So, he humbly confesses, “I am sure that the problem with my money is the guy in my mirror.” If this describes you, if you have too much month left at the end of your money, his advice is to “get a mirror.” “That man in the mirror is your Total Money Makeover Challenge,” he proclaims.

Ramsey is not a fan of the word “allowance.” He realizes the power of words and thinks this one has a negative connotation. It makes children who ask for one seem inept, he touts.

Other Endeavors

While The Total Money Makeover is his cash cow, he has also written (and originally self-published) Financial Peace, along with a planner with the same name. Regarding the difference between The Total Money Makeover and Financial Peace, he writes that the latter is “what to do with money,” while the former is a “how to do it” plan.

In addition, other books he has penned include Foundations in Personal Finance, More Than Enough and Life Lessons With Junior (a children’s series). While adults are his prime audience, he thinks even more attention needs to be on kids.

He’s obviously a pretty good marketer, too, as he runs a class called Financial Peace University. It integrates video teaching, class discussions and small group activities. The follow up program to it, The Legacy Journey, is a training series for adults, focused on “What’s Next” after getting out of debt. While debt is a bondage he urges his listeners to avoid, he makes an exception for certain types of home mortgages.  

Advice

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He recommends good growth stock-type mutual funds and confidently states that you should make 12 percent on your money over time. The Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 stocks, he declares, have averaged a gain of 11.67 percent per year for the last 80+ years – and that even includes the 2008 market. He also suggests that retirees withdraw 8% of their retirement fund each year (as opposed to the conventional recommendation of 4%).

In Total Money Makeover, he tells the story of the typical American making car payments. He says the average car payment is $495 over 64 months. “Most people,” he writes, “get a cay payment and keep it throughout their lives. As soon as a car is paid off, they get another payment because they ‘need’ a new car. If you keep a $495 car payment throughout your life,” he astutely points out, “which is ‘normal,’ you miss the opportunity to save that money. If you invested $495 per month from age 25 to age 65, a normal working lifetime, in the average mutual fund (the aforementioned 80 year 12% stock market average), you would have $5,881,799.14 at age sixty five. Hope you like the car!”

As a result, his best piece of advice may be, “Don’t even consider keeping up with the Joneses. They’re broke!” That quote, in tandem with the reality that “to change your money thing, you have to change,” is priceless. Finally, someone with the guts to tell it like it is!

Volatility

Due to the stock market’s ups and downs, Ramsey’s philosophy is that your plan has to work in both good and bad times. Consequently, he quotes Warren Buffett when he says, “When the tide goes out, you can tell who was skinny-dipping.”

Total Money Makeover has been a bestseller for years. My copy of it boasts “Three Million Copies Sold and Lives Changed.” That figure has now doubled. His goateed visage adorns the cover. The subtitle is A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness. Most noteworthy is that there is a workbook that complements it.

Give & Live

Furthermore, lest you think he is only about hoarding the money he has made, pinching every penny, he is also a strong proponent of giving. He thinks children should have three envelopes: save, spend and give. Besides Benjamins, he believes in giving hope, too.

Above all, his motto, written on every page of Total Money Makeover, is “If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.”

About the Author

Frank Felsburg is a writer, publisher and marketer living in Western North Carolina. He is looking forward to another short winter, in contrast to when he lived in the Philadelphia area.

10.5 Million Gets You on the List

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Nora Roberts on Goodreads

The Forbes list of wealthiest writers over a one year period hit the newsstands recently. And there are a few surprises. James Patterson headed the list (no surprise here). Bill Clinton recently collaborated with him on a novel entitled The President is Missing. Patterson sold nearly 5 million books in the U.S. alone this year, earning $86 million, according to Forbes.

J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame is right behind him (or $32 million behind him, anyway). Many know her story as an author. She grabbed $54 million over this time frame, $41 million less than last year. Pretty rough year.

Stephen King, writer – and Boston Red Sox fan, was number three. He still writes macabre stories and gets paid very well for them. That’s scary. In many ways, he’s kind of the modern day Alfred Hitchcock. He made $27 million – much, much more than Hitchcock ever dreamed of (or had a nightmare about).

The Rest of the List

John Grisham was fourth. I have a great deal of respect for JG — and not just because he, too, is a huge baseball fan (see my blog post of January 1, 2018 for a deeper dive into what I think of him). He wasn’t too far behind his friend King, as his haul reached $21 million.

Number five was a tie. Jeff Kinney must’ve been some wimpy kid, so I didn’t think I’d ever heard of him. However, Dan Brown, the author on the list that Kinney tied in the rankings, I have heard of. Danielle Steele and Nora Roberts are names that most people recognize. They tied for eighth on the list. I’m not that familiar with Rick Riordan and E.L James, perhaps because I don’t generally read fiction. They pulled up the bottom of the list with ONLY $10.5 million in earnings (each) this year.

One More Gainfully Employed Individual

Michael Wolff made the Top 10 after the release of his book, Fire and Fury, this year. Apparently, Trump got him a job, too, since DJT’s been in office. Wolff is the first nonfiction author on the list in 11 years. The book sold 1.7 million copies, flying off the shelves in hardcover, e-book and audio formats in the first three weeks alone. Wolff earned an estimated $13 million from June of 2017 to June of 2018. This placed him seventh on the list of the year’s wealthiest writers.

Persistence is a Plus

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Rowling didn’t give up either. She was a single mom who lived in a small flat while going to cafes to write Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. She often took her daughter Jessica (named after Jessica Mitford, the British investigative journalist and activist, who was J.K.’s favorite author). Jessica slept in a pram next to her while J.K. scribbled away.

J.K. said she was as poor as possible without being homeless — severely depressed and considered suicide. Christopher Little, an “obscure London literary agent,” finally accepted Rowling’s book, after she was on the receiving end of many rejection letters.

Grisham didn’t give up either. He felt that the fact that he had successfully completed law school – persevered through years of study, then taking the bar exam – was ideal training for the task of persisting through the obstacle course that is publishing.

All earnings describe June 1, 2017 thru June 1, 2018. Figures are pretax; fees for agents, managers and lawyers aren’t deducted (and you can be sure they’ll get their share). NPD BookScan and Box Office Mojo collected the data. Industry insiders, along with some of the authors themselves, were interviewed for the study.

The world’s 11 highest paid authors sold nearly 25 million print books combined in the U.S. alone over the one year period. Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train, was most likely #11.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FJ Felsburg, ghostwriter, publisher and marketer, lives in Western North Carolina with his beautiful wife and hyperactive dog, surrounded by woods infiltrated with snakes, raccoons, bears, bobcats, white squirrels and turkeys.