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“Barbie and Ken are broke” is the fact of the matter, says Dave Ramsey, author of best-selling books “The Total Money Makeover” and “Financial Peace Revisited.”
Ramsey hosts The Dave Ramsey Show, a financial-advice radio show that airs on more than 350 mostly secular radio stations. He also developed a biblically based seminar called Financial Peace University (FPU) that has been used by more than 15,000 churches nationwide, according to Jason Barmer, a Team Leader of Financial Peace at The Lampo Group Inc., Ramsey’s consulting organization.
High Pointe Baptist Church in Austin is beginning its third segment of FPU, which is one of the classes they offer as part of their “Life Institute.”
Otis Fields, a church elder and the FPU coordinator, said, “The people who have gone through it have changed the way they think about money. It has improved marriages because money is always a point of contention. Couples and individuals learn how to set financial goals, and how to communicate about money. You learn to make an agreement up front?to tell your paycheck where it’s going to go.”
The 13-week curriculum teaches seven chronological “Baby Steps” to begin a journey to Financial Peace, including:
?Saving $1,000 to start an emergency fund;
?Paying off all debt using the “Debt Snowball”;
?Growing savings to cover three to six months of expenses;
?Investing 15 percent of household income into Roth IRA’s and pre-tax retirement;
?Starting a college fund for children;
?Paying off your home early;
?Building wealth and giving;
Fields explained that step one, the emergency fund, is to prevent having to charge unexpected expenses on a credit card. Once that fund is established, the next step is to pay off your smallest debt as quickly as possible, then apply the money allocated for that debt toward the next smallest debt.
“That’s how it snowballs up,” he said.
“It is a step-by-step process for getting out of debt, and staying out of debt so that you can give more to the kingdom if you want to,” Fields added.
As each step is completed, finances are freed up to work on achieving the next step. At one point in the course, Fields reported that in an exercise, his small group of 10 almost filled a half gallon container with cut up credit cards.
“It was amazing how many credit cards we had!” he said.
In the last semester that Tate Springs Baptist Church of Arlington offered FPU, 15 couples paid off a cumulative total of $84,000 in debt, said Associate Pastor Adam Harwood.
“It has served as discipleship for our members in the area of financial stewardship, as well as outreach. We don’t view it as only for our members?it has kingdom reach and folks from other churches are able to benefit,” he said.
“God has blessed the church and giving is strong here?we can’t really correlate any change in giving.But we do know that when couples are able to pay off debt and begin savings, if they hadn’t been giving before, they will give because that is something Ramsey emphasizes.”
Though FPU is not a Bible study, it is an application of biblical principles. On his website, daveramsey.com, Ramsey quotes about 75 Scripture passages of 800 that he says relate directly to the handling of finances. Attendees purchase a kit for use during the course that contains the book, a workbook, audio CDs, budgeting resources, and envelopes for an envelope system of controlling spending in each area. At each session, students watch a video presentation by Ramsey, then break up into discussion groups.
Cottonwood Creek Baptist Church in Allen is beginning a fourth semester of FPU.
“We’ve been drawing people in from our community,” said coordinator Carol Kemp. “They hear Dave Ramsey on the radio, and look on his website to find a location for FPU. That’s how some of them find us.”
Recently the church hosted a one-day Total Money Makeover seminar led by a financial trainer from Ramsey’s organization. About 200 from the community attended, and nearly 25 couples there signed up to be part of the new session of FPU.
Barmer reported: “More than 650,000 families have completed FPU at their workplace, church, military base, nonprofit organization or community group, and are working toward debt freedom and ‘financial peace.’ We have had 50 churches go through the Momentum workshop. Most of them arelaunching the program this month or next.”
Momentum, Barmer explained, is an 18-24-month church-wide initiative tocreate aculture of generosity within the church. According to the website, the program is an intense discipleship training on the lordship of Jesus Christ that teaches church leaders how to create healthy budgets, fund projects debt-free, and eliminate debt. Using FPU as a cornerstone, church members learn how to manage personal finances so they can “beat debt, build wealth, and give like never before.”
Barmer said, “Any family can benefit from FPU. The class covers practicaltopics like insurance, investing,college planning, and real estate. Whocan’t improve what they do with at least one of those topics?”
For more information on Dave Ramsey, Financial Peace University, or Momentum, and to view, free of charge, the first FPU lesson, go to daveramsey.com/fpu/church.
