More Than Enough By Dave Ramsey Book Review Part 4
Every Sunday here at Ask Mr. Credit Card we review a personal finance book. This week concludes our review of “More Than Enough” by Dave Ramsey.
If you missed the first three parts of the review, you can read them here:
- More Than Enough By Dave Ramsey – Review Part 1
- More Than Enough by Dave Ramsey – Part 2
- More Than Enough by Dave Ramsey Part 3
Good, Better, Best: Work, Discipline, Diligence
“Work keep us from the three evils: boredom, vice, and poverty.” Voltaire said.
Why do people believe they can build wealth or relationships without work? I am baffled when I meet so many people who appear intelligent, seem to have hope, and yet the idea of hard work does not even occur to them.
Work is doing it. Discipline is doing it every day. Diligence is doing it well every day. It all starts with work.
Work is another common denominator of people who win. You cannot be the best, you cannot build wealth, you cannot be or do anything of significance if you won’t work, and work hard.
The only lazy or slothful folks who are wealthy are folks who inherited oney or won it, and they are rare.
Of America’s millionaires, 80% are first generation rich. That means they got up, left the cave, killed something, and drug it home.
If you want to be wealthy and have fabulous relationships, work has to be a part of your life.
Well, it’ definitely true that hard work is pretty much the magic recipe for success – or at least the first building block!
Have you ever had someone say to you, “Oh you are so luck to have gotten that promotion / expensive object / opportunity?” Did it bother you?
If you are anything like me it did! The truth is, whatever we have, no matter how much or how little, we worked for it. Everyone works for it. And the Uber successful people often work longer and harder than their competition to get where they are. Successful people are driven to be successful. It’s an internal force that motivates you, and you can apply it to anything.
Hard work opens locked doors. The key to almost any locked door is hard work. Hard work seems to surround itself with friends: opportunity, luck, and solution to life’s greatest problems. The activity created by sheer movement stirs up wonderful things in your life.
Thomas Jefferson said “I am a great believer in luck, and the harder I work, the more I have of it.” When opportunity knocks you have to be ready not just to answer, but to apply tons of effort to making your chance happen. When opportunity knocks, don’t be surprised if it i wearing work clothes when you answer the door.
It has also been said that anything worth having in life is worth working for. Work is the difference between a much-loved pipe dream and a true reality.
Do you have dreams that could benefit from a little application of “work?” I sure do. Aside from a variety of personal goals, I’d like to have another book published, and a retirement account that I actually max my contributions to each year.
These things will all take a lot of work, and perseverance, but I am not going to give up on them. Day by day, I am going to put in the work, time and energy so that my dreams do become a reality.
Building wealth is almost imposible without discipline. I hate this because I too am human and discipline is not easy for me either. But facts are facts and most wealthy people get that way by living on a monthly spending plan, by saving money every month, and by investing money every month.
If Ben saves just $100 per month from age twenty-two to age seventy-two at 12% in a decent mutual fund he will have $3,905,833.
If he saves that amount into a Roth IRA this young man retires with almost $4 million tax free. For the price of a couple of pizzas and cable every month, $4 million seems like a deal. There is no excuse to retire broke in America today! But he has to do it every month. And so do you.
To be honest, I hate these sorts of examples. I would very much like for Mr. Ramsey to direct me to a mutual fund that earns 12% every year without fail.
However, the principle behind the math is sound. Investing a little money over a long period of time (and then leaving it alone to let it grow) is a good plan.
It’s not a “get rich quick” plan. It’s a slow, methodical, common sense method of planning your future.
Most of u aren’t in our early twenties either – but that doesn’t mean that we can’t still benefit from beginning, or increasing our retirement savings accounts.
Teach The Children:
Please teach your kids to work. You doom them toa life of frustration and mediocrity if they don’t learn a work ethic from you.
Work is a life skill, like bahting, or driving a car, and it must be taught.
Babies are cute, but let’s face it- they are little savages. Our nature at birth is not a nature that will lead us to prosperity. Our nature must be harnessed and taught.
There has never been a child born who gets up every morning, makes his bed, cleans his room and brushes his teeth – without instruction.
By removing work from a child’s life you cripple him. That child will enter into the world of adulthood without a clue as to what is coming.
Worse yet, some poor unsuspecting person may marry this spolied bum you have raised.
Work used to be necessary for survival in America’s rural past. You rose before the sun and did chores – hard ones – that brough value to the family, even if you were seven.
Character was built at an early age, and this was not child abuse.
Child abuse is a fat little boy with his butt in front of the Nintendo for hours on end eating yet another whole bag of Doritos. This child thinks of no one but himself and is in for a long and frustrating life because he has not learned the satisfaction, joy, and value of work.
That was a long quote, but I really wanted to include it here in it’s entirety. The more modern things get – the more mechanized, sterilized, homogenized, and any other “ized” types you can think of – the lazier we all get.
For many of us survival isn’t a challenge any more. We our food at the grocery store, drop off our laundry at the dry cleaner’s, and drive through for our dinners.
It is certainly nice that things which used to take hours can now take much less time or become someone else’s job entirely. The important thing is to make sure that we make the best use of the time that we are saving, and also, that we teach our children to do the very same thing.
No matter how many times I tell my young daughter to “pick up her toys” she will not. Until I get down in the floor and show her what to do. (She’s two). We are all either taught these things, or not taught these things.
Some people may not have had the benefit of learning these lessons as children. But that does not mean that we can’t pass the lessons we’ve already learned on to our children. No matter how young or old they are!
In Conclusion:
More Than Enough is an excellent personal finance book. It doesn’t deal with many concrete numbers, instead Ramsey chooses to dole out good old fashioned common sense with a little bit of humor mixed in.
If you ever find yourself fighting with your significant other about your money; if you are in debt and don’t know what to do; if you just can’t seem to make ends meet, then this book is an excellent place to start looking for help.
The answers in More than enough have been proven over and over again throughout the generations. There’s no real “new” material here, but it is an amazing and valuable book that gently reminds us all of what we already know to be true, but just can’t seem to do.
Have a question for us? Leave a comment below!
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Carnivals:
Thanks also go out to these carnivals which included our articles this week:
- Fesitval of Frugality #163rd Edition @ My Journey To Millions
- Carnival of Money Stories – Edition 95 @ Dividend Tree
- Money Hacks Carnival #50 at Curious Cat
- Money Advice from Personal Finance Blogs @ The Skilled Investor.
- 189th Carnival of Personal Finance: Super Bowl edition @ Taking Charge.
