Dave Ramsay

[Bobbins43]

I keep hearing his name but have no idea about his method. Has anyone read the book or followed his plan? How does it work?

@nannynick is your guy here!

So there's babysteps to follow. Have a look for a copy of the total money makeover. He does a podcast too.

I follow the plan, although not to the letter. Some bits are too American and right wing/religious for me.... so they need to have health insurance as there's no NHS. That's all irrelevant in the uk. He also talks about tithing- again not for me. However the babysteps do make sense.

Good luck

It's a plan to help teach you about managing money like our grandparents did. Not relying on credit.

First is to quickly build up a £1000 emergency fund, because life happens and there will be things that you need to spend money on which you could not plan for in advance.

You get on a zero based budget - that is one where you decide what you will spend in each category and decide before the month begins, on paper (or digitally) and you stick to it. Zero based because you give each bit of income coming in an allocation, so the end result is zero... you have spent it all, but on purpose, with a Savings category and a debt repayment category.

Baby Step 2 (so after you have £1000 emergency fun) you list your debts smallest to largest and you get real intense about paying off the smallest loan. By tackling each debt in turn, smallest to largest, you teach your brain to pay off debt, as you see quick achievement of the goal at first.

Baby Step 3 is a three to six month emergency fund. I am so glad I have this as I have just been informed that I am being made redundant from my main job... so I have my BS3 Emergency Fund, so I have money in savings to live on.

More about the baby steps: www.daveramsey.com/baby-steps

UK Based Facebook Group (unofficial): www.facebook.com/groups/1625701281083011/

A good video to watch as a starter:

It is very useful to listen or watch the show most days. Once you get in to a pattern of doing that you will learn about how the baby steps are applied to other people's situations and hear about how others have achieved the goal of being debt free.

Links to YouTube, iTunes, Google Play etc can be found at: www.daveramsey.com/show/home/?snid=show

You can ignore the religious side of it, I do and instead of tithing - i.e. Giving money to a church- I donate to charities.