I am finishing up taking a great class which is offered as a DVD series around the country which I thought I would plug a bit since it is freaking awesome. The guy that does the videos is Dave Ramsey, who has a talk radio show about personal finance. He made a lot of money in real estate, but lived beyond his means and went totally bankrupt and lost everything. In the process of digging himself out of debt he decided he would pass along his lessons learned.
I had some credit problems in grad school and ran up a lot of debt myself, and found there were a lot of programs that claimed to be trying to help but mainly just wanted to take advantage of people. Dave is funny, a great teacher, and doesn't talk down to his audience like most financial folks. I got out from credit card debt using a program that was very similar to his (Cristian Credit Counseling, they use a debt snowball type approach too) and I think his approach is refreshing and very sound. I went to the class to learn about where to go from here and to find out more about how not to live in continual financial crisis.
The class is not free, but most places that run it will pay for folks to attend if the fee is a serious problem. He also has some books out which are cheaper and may be available at your local library, who knows. I like his presentation in the class better though so I would recommend taking the class personally.
Dave is a Christian and does quote scripture, but it is not a really preachy program (at least I didn't think so), but I thought I would let folks know in case you are allergic to Jesus.
We don't want anyone getting Soul Hives.
http://www.daveramsey.com/fpu/home/He is also doing a simulcast next week about dealing with the recession that may be of interest. This is probably free if you are interested and live near somewhere that is hosting it.
http://www.townhallforhope.com/
Author
