Nonfiction Book Reviews

Financial Peace: Restoring Financial Hope to You and Your Family by Dave Ramsey is an average book for those who are just starting out on the road back to fiscal responsibility. If you have never read a book about how to manage your finances and want a very general overarching idea of where to start, this book is for you. If you’re a fan of Dave Ramsey and want to learn a bit more about his background and how he got started counseling people on their finances, this book is for you.

Unfortunately, I don’t fall under either of those categories, and so although the book was slightly entertaining to me (Dave can be quite funny at times), overall the book simply seemed repetitive. Every financial book seems to cover the same bases: Pay yourself first, put together a budget and stick to it, always spend less than you make, spend time looking for good bargains (never pay retail!) and put together an emergency fund in case of a rainy day. Dave is no different – he covers these same points just like every other book out there.

The book also suffers from being on the older side – it was originally written in 1992, and then reprinted in 1997, and it definitely shows. Last but not least, Dave Ramsey is Christian, so he spends a lot of his time quoting scriptures out of the Bible. I’m a Christian too, so this didn’t bother me too much (although I’ve never figured out how finances and Christianity related to each other), but I did think that was worthy of mention, because if that’s something that would bug you, you won’t want to pick this book up, or any book by Dave Ramsey since he does the same thing in his other books.

To be fair, there were parts that made me laugh. Case in point: Dave was trying to drive home the point that bad things will always happen to you, and so he gave the following “test” for the reader to perform:

“Put this book down now. Hold your right hand up in front of you with your elbow bent. Now reach your left hand across the back of your wrist to where your fingertips touch your main artery, and then check for a pulse. Is your heart beating? If you are alive and walking around, things will happen to you that you don’t think will. The only way you can avoid unexpected financial events is not to be alive – so they’re not ‘unexpected’ events, are they?”

He also said, “One of my friends said her grandmother taught her to have a G.O.K fund – God Only Knows.” That made me laugh out loud, which isn’t common for a nonfiction book on finances. I decided my emergency fund needed to be renamed to the GOK fund, because that sounds much cooler than a plain ole’ Emergency Fund.

But overall, a much better book to read Dave Ramsey’s other book, “Total Money Makeover.” That has more concrete information that is actually usable.

Overall, I give it 3.25 stars out of 5.

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