The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness

Anecdotes are amusing or interesting short stories frequently used in a narrative framework to demonstrate a point or make readers ponder an idea. The Total Money Makeover is filled with anecdotes of people who have used Dave Ramsey’s steps to achieve financial success. Ramsey also provides anecdotes from his own life.

Ramsey’s anecdotes position him as the author-protagonist of a hero’s journey from despair to wealth. He gives the account of how he went bankrupt after struggling up from humble beginnings and making millions of dollars in real estate. He repeatedly talks about how going broke forced him to sell his precious Jaguar, a moment that highlights the necessity of “making a decision about looking good versus being good” (33). He adds as a “footnote” (88) that once he let go of the need for a fancy car, God allowed him to have a Jaguar again. He illustrates his biblical gazelle metaphor about debt with a story of watching a cheetah chase a gazelle on television. Talking specifically to men, he emphasizes that having adequate emergency funds will bring the women in their lives peace of mind; he also discusses how his own bad financial decisions left his wife, Sharon, feeling helpless and scared at their lowest point. He describes how Heaven, his Chinese pug, gives people a funny look, comparing this to the look people give him when he talks about paying off mortgages (186).

Other stories derive from his readers’ and listeners’ experiences; one man, named Chris, made it through the 2008 Great Recession despite being laid off to demonstrate the importance of having no debt. He tells the story of a couple who discovered the hard way they were near financial disaster to convey the danger of denial. He tells three stories about men who cosigned on loans and were left with “broken hearts and broken wallets” (28). He stresses the importance of insurance with Steve’s story—his insurance paid $100,000 in medical bills for brain cancer (72). These are only a few of the many examples he provides of ordinary people succeeding at using his methods.

The anecdotes of The Total Money Makeover are included for diverse purposes—sometimes they encourage, sometimes they warn, sometimes they illustrate or exemplify an idea. Anecdotes are Ramsey’s preferred evidence to support his claims, demonstrating his effort to abstain from “intricate academic theories” (5) and abstract math so that his book is accessible and convincing to ordinary readers. His preference for anecdotes also indicates his belief that stories have a greater emotional and rhetorical impact than formulas: “the math does need to work, but sometimes motivation is more important than math” (114).