Review: Baby Steps Millionaires: How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth--and How You Can Too

Baby Steps Millionaires: How Ordinary People Built Extraordinary Wealth--and How You Can Too by Dave Ramsey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ramsey’s newest book takes a slightly different perspective on his wealth-building concepts than others of his books I’ve read recently. Some of his books tend to take the perspective of the always behind on payments, heavily in debt plodder, where just funding a savings account is an accomplishment. Another recent book of his that I read took the perspective of a kindly older, long-time saver, who has mostly won the battle and now has to think beyond survival basics and to consider wants and building a legacy. “Baby Steps Millionaire” is more like the first perspective, with one just starting out, but also one who perhaps has their financial act together. It’s like this is written for those who know what to do, but need that nudge to get them to start acting on their knowledge.

As always, Ramsey has a multi-step program to save and invest throughout your lifetime, and he doesn’t stray from that here. This is the same kind of book as his other intro books. I’d consider it a pretty good, basic start for a lot of people that just don’t want to be bothered with earning a finance degree to handle your own personal finances. Note that Ramsey does expound on the Christian aspect of savings, and Christianity in general, more than in most of his previous books that I’ve read.

There are a couple of parts that I didn’t like. Ramsey does tend to drop advertisements for his company’s products in his media, and he does so here, pitching investment advisors that carry his certification, and pitching his daughter’s books, which I believe he publishes and heavily markets. I tend to dislike advertisements for products within books, but in this case, the products mentioned are not a requirement to meet the goals set forward in this book, nor are they required as part of the process described. Another part I didn’t appreciate was a rather long section, near the beginning of the book, where Ramsey explains the difference between how a person with a million dollars spends money and how a person with a billion dollars spends money. He is trying to stop people from thinking that a million dollars is Jed Clampett rich. (Or Mark Zuckerberg rich, for those whose cultural references are less than 50 years old.) Ramsey spends altogether too much time describing these differences by analogies. It often feels like he’s talking down to you, while also writing like he’s trying to stretch a few more pages into the book. You have my permission to speed read through this section. You’ll feel better for it.

I listened to the audio version of this book. The audio version that I had did not have the millionaire study that ends the hardcopy and ebook versions of the book. I think I would have enjoyed this more than some of the other content.


View all my reviews