50 pages • 1 hour read
Dave RamseyThe Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 12-13 and Other ContentChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary: “Build Wealth Like Crazy: Arnold Shwarzedollar, Mr. Universe of Money”
Ramsey ends the Total Money Makeover plan with Baby Step Seven: building wealth. Ramsey prefaces his discussion of Baby Step Seven with a question: “Why do you want to have wealth?” (203). He answers that wealth is a responsibility and ought to be put to three uses: fun, investing, and giving.
Ramsey talks about fun first. Delayed gratification was the rule of the previous Baby Steps, but now Ramsey happily urges spending on fun because without debt the new car, nice house, or vacation can be enjoyed without worry or guilt.
Ramsey next considers continued investing. He tells readers to treat wealth-building like an ongoing game instead of cashing out and calling it quits when they have just enough to last them until death. He advises them to keep their investments simple and get financial counsel without transferring financial responsibility to others. Ramsey informs readers that with continued effort they will eventually reach a “Pinnacle Point,” the moment when “your money works harder than you do” (211). He likens the exhilaration of achieving this milestone to the joy a kid experiences riding down a hill on a bike after laboriously pedaling up.
Finally, Ramsey discusses giving. He suggests that giving is the best and most enjoyable use of wealth, observing that giving requires having something to give: “Money gives power to good intentions. That’s why I’m unashamedly in favor of building wealth” (213). He denounces greed through the metaphorical application of Canadian American author Eric Butterworth’s description of a monkey with its hand trapped in a jar because it refuses to let go of the nuts inside. Then he tells the story of an anonymous Secret Santa (later identified as American philanthropist Larry Stewart), who freely gave $100 bills to strangers.
Ramsey concludes the chapter by reemphasizing the importance of each of these uses of wealth and mentioning that they can be done with temperance during earlier Baby Steps of the Total Money Makeover plan.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Live Like No One Else”
In the final chapter, Ramsey gives a brief spiritual appraisal of the Total Money Makeover plan. He warns against becoming “enamored with wealth” (219), emphasizing that he does not believe making and enjoying money is “the answer to happiness, emotional well-being, and spiritual maturity” (220). He remarks that wealth will only “make you more of what you are” (221).
Ramsey briefly discusses wealth from a specifically Christian perspective. Alarmed by the dominantly negative Christian perspective toward wealth, he asserts that “wealth is not evil” and elaborates, “it is your spiritual duty to possess riches so that you can do with them things that bring glory to God” (221). The danger he perceives is in idolizing wealth, not in having and using wealth.
Last of all, Ramsey expresses his desire that hope would be the most important takeaway for readers of his book. He reminds them that thousands of ordinary people have changed their lives by taking on the Total Money Makeover plan.
Other Content Summary
Two remaining features of The Total Money Makeover deserve mention: the sample forms and the testimonies. The sample forms allow readers to visualize financial calculations and arrange financial information. Readers can list their debts, plan out savings and retirement, determine how much to save for college or pay on a mortgage, and more. These forms are included at appropriate points in the book and at the end.
Also interspersed throughout The Total Money Makeover are testimonies of “money victories” from individuals, couples, and families that followed Ramsey’s financial principles. These testimonies are so prominent that they interrupt the flow of Ramsey’s writing—they are not pushed to the ends of chapters—and have individual entries in the Index. In his introduction, Ramsey even encourages readers to first read the testimonies, skipping everything else (ix). These testimonies generally follow the same narrative and emotional arc: People in financial disaster, hopeless and unhappy, are inspired to apply Ramsey’s principles and put in the effort, eventually achieving financial freedom. However, not all the testimonies come from those who have reached Ramsey’s finish line—some have only just paid off their debts, others have started a college fund for their children, and a few have achieved riches. The testimonies are ordered in such a way that they highlight success in specific stages of the Total Money Makeover plan at the appropriate points in Ramsey’s exposition. The last testimony is that of the Morrow family, winners of a special money makeover challenge that launched with the first edition of The Total Money Makeover. Kimberly Morrow, 40, is a stay-at-home mom while Chance Morrow, 40, is a cable technician. They have five children and accomplished their financial makeover in several years and won the challenge’s $50,000 prize.
Chapters 12-13 and Other Content Analysis
These last two main chapters (Chapters 12 and 13) are a sort of vision of paradise for readers, highlighting the rewards they can expect for following the Total Money Makeover plan:
You are totally debt-free—no house payment, no car payment. You are not Mastered by a Card, you have not Discovered bondage, American excess has left your life, you have no student loans […] and you are free. […] You have a retirement destiny that looks better than Alpo and Social Insecurity (203).
Throughout the book, Ramsey has stressed that Financial Improvement Is Self-Improvement and that money behavior touches on emotional, relational, cultural, and spiritual issues. Now he finally balances this idea with the corollary claim that not everything in life is about money. He strongly disagrees with the belief that money alone brings peace and contentment, a stance that contributes to the book’s partial positioning within the self-help genre, because total wellbeing is about many things, not just or even primarily about financial status.
In the final chapters, Ramsey is addressing readers who have already followed his plan, emphasizing his plan consists of Plain, Practical, Proven Principles, so unsurprisingly he deviates from talking about details and practical steps, instead taking a broader, philosophical look at the purpose of wealth. People in financial trouble want money to escape hardship like eating beans and rice, being sued by lenders, and not being able to afford medical treatment. Ramsey leverages the fear of these things earlier in the book, but now he motivates readers by appealing to deeper, less material needs—the innate human desire to enjoy life and the spiritual desire to do good by giving to others. The emotional narrative of the last two chapters reaches its climax when Ramsey discusses the metaphorical “Pinnacle Point,” shares the anecdote of Secret Santa, and gives readers hope that they can achieve freedom.
The testimonies and financial forms included in the book serve the complementary but distinct functions of inspiring hope and channeling the explosive energy of that hope into immediate, useful outcomes, such as determining how much to invest or making a budget. They represent the idea that Motivation Matters More Than Knowledge in achieving control over one’s financial life. They are a representation of Ramsey’s two main preoccupations in writing The Total Money Makeover: giving people hope and providing a concrete, practical plan for success.
