Ramsey Giving Quotes

Someone who never has fun with money misses the point. Someone who never invests money will never have any. Someone who never gives is a monkey with his hand in a bottle.

Financial peace isn't the acquisition of stuff. It's learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can't win until you do this.

Requiring nothing of a child gives them no opportunity for failure or success.

I didn't want him to think I was giving up - I wasn't. I simply couldn't put myself together just yet.

Islam is the only religion that gives dignity to the poor.

But there's also the fact that in my experience most of my readers are first and foremost plain old-fashioned readers. Good readers. They're not looking for cozy brand-name output and that means I don't have to give it to 'em. They're not lazy and have little patience with pre-fab beach-bag books or Oprah's opine du jour. They're questers. They know that every now and then you're gonna get lucky and pure gold like King and Straub's Black House will simply drop into your lap at the local supermarket but after that, if your bent is horror and suspense fiction, you're gonna have to get your hands dirty and root around for more. Find a Ramsey Campbell or an Edward Lee. They expect diversity and search it out. They want what all good readers want - to be taken somewhere in a book or a story that's really worth visiting for a while. Maybe even worth thinking about after. If that place happens to scare the hell out of you all the better.

Dealing with white people faux pas as a black woman is tricky: if you get upset, you can be quickly be labeled as the "angry black girl"; if you're too passive, it seems like you're give permission, or letting racism slide.

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you

God gives every bird its food, but He does not throw it into the nest. J. G. HOLLAND

A natural saver is great until he never spends and is tight-fisted with giving. A natural spender is great until she finds herself deeply in debt and unable to give. A natural giver is great until there are no savings when a problem arises and there is no personal enjoyment of money.

True freedom gives a man not only the right to make a right choice, but also the freedom to make a wrong choice. ~ Norma Ramsey, 1954

Often the best gifts we can give each other cost nothing.

At this stage in The Total Money Makeover, you are the Mr. Universe of Money, with serious abs, pecs, and quads. You have all this financial muscle, so now you should do something intentional with it. It is not just to look at. We built this financial superbody for a reason. To have FUN, INVEST, and GIVE.

Baby Steps: Step 1: $1,000 in an emergency fund. Step 2: Pay off all debt except the house utilizing the debt snowball. Step 3: Three to six months of savings in a fully-funded emergency fund. Step 4: Invest 15% of your household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement plans. Step 5: College Funding (i.e. 529 plan). Step 6: Pay off your home early. Step 7: Build wealth and give.

Goals convert vision into energy. When you lay out exactly what you want to do in detail, you immediately start feeling the room move and the earth shake. You are pulled into your new life like some scene from a movie. Goals help make great men. J. C. Penney once said, “Give me a stock clerk with a goal, and I will give you a man who will make history. Give me a man without a goal and I will give you a stock clerk.

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.

Behold divinity divine enough to abandon divinity. Behold majesty secure enough to proceed un-majestically. Behold strength strong enough to become weakness, goodness good enough to be unmindful of its reputation. Behold love plenteous enough to give and take not again.

One of the problems with a 529 plan is that you must give up an element of control. The best 529 plans available, and my second choice to an ESA, is a “flexible” plan. This type of plan allows you to move your investment around periodically within a certain family of funds. A family of funds is a brand name of mutual fund. You could pick from virtually any mutual fund in the American Funds Group or Vanguard or Fidelity. You are stuck in one brand, but you can choose the type of fund, the amount in each, and move it around if you want. This is the only type of 529 I recommend.

Poverty thinking is always focused on other people’s money, and it often gets obsessively focused on an unbiblical notion of equality (which we’ll discuss in more detail in the next chapter). If there are two people in a room, one rich and one broke, then a modern-day Robin Hood should come in, take the rich person’s money, and give it to the broke person. The fact that Robin Hood was a thief isn’t important.

When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice it is small, but we do not criticize it as “rootless and stemless.” We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don’t condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; we do not criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place, and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change. Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is. A flower is not better when it blooms than when it is merely a bud; at each stage it is the same thing . . . a flower in the process of expressing its potential. The

Being real takes tremendous courage. We like approval, and we like respect, and to say otherwise is another form of denial. To wish for the admiration of others is normal. The problem is that this admiration can become a drug. Many of you are addicted to this drug, and the destruction to your wealth and financial well-being caused by your addiction is huge. Radical change in the quest for approval, which has involved purchasing stuff with money we don’t have, is required for a money breakthrough. Sara’s breakthrough came with family. Her family was upper-middle-crust and had always given Christmas gifts to every member. With twenty nieces and nephews and six sets of adults to buy for, just on her side, the budget was ridiculous. Sara’s announcement at Thanksgiving that this year Christmas giving was going to be done with the drawing of names, because she and Bob couldn’t afford it, was earth-shattering. Some of you are grinning as if this is no big deal. It was a huge deal in Sara’s family! Gift giving was a tradition! Her mother and two of her sisters-in-law were furious. Very little thanks were given that Thanksgiving, but Sara stood her ground and said, “No more.” Sara

The spirit of gratitude says thank you. Thank You for giving me the money to take care of my family and put food on the table. Thank You for the ability to buy a decent car and take my wife on a great vacation. Thank You for providing for my needs today and my retirement tomorrow. Thank You for Your principles on how to handle money because using them has allowed me to change my family tree and leave a legacy that will outlive me. At its core, the spirit of gratitude says, God, I’m going to manage this wealth and this stuff Your way—because it’s Yours. Thank You for trusting me to manage it for You.

When thoughts have boundaries, problems are easier to solve. I’ve studied boundaries, taught boundaries and enforced boundaries both professionally and personally. What is desperately missing from the conversation around boundaries is giving our own thoughts boundaries. Our brains can readily find solutions when the boundaries are laid out before us. If you are looking for a word, you will be able to locate the word more quickly on a spelling list versus a word search. If you are looking for a specific type of flower, you will be able to locate the flower more quickly in a garden with carefully laid out rows versus a jungle where there are no boundaries.

Here’s a Reader’s Digest version of my approach. I select mutual funds that have had a good track record of winning for more than five years, preferably for more than ten years. I don’t look at their one-year or three-year track records because I think long term. I spread my retirement, investing evenly across four types of funds. Growth and Income funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Large Cap or Blue Chip funds.) Growth funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Mid Cap or Equity funds; an S&P Index fund would also qualify.) International funds get 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Foreign or Overseas funds.) Aggressive Growth funds get the last 25 percent of my investment. (They are sometimes called Small Cap or Emerging Market funds.) For a full discussion of what mutual funds are and why I use this mix, go to daveramsey.com and visit MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com. The invested 15 percent of your income should take advantage of all the matching and tax advantages available to you. Again, our purpose here is not to teach the detailed differences in every retirement plan out there (see my other materials for that), but let me give you some guidelines on where to invest first. Always start where you have a match. When your company will give you free money, take it. If your 401(k) matches the first 3 percent, the 3 percent you put in will be the first 3 percent of your 15 percent invested. If you don’t have a match, or after you have invested through the match, you should next fund Roth IRAs. The Roth IRA will allow you to invest up to $5,000 per year, per person. There are some limitations as to income and situation, but most people can invest in a Roth IRA. The Roth grows tax-FREE. If you invest $3,000 per year from age thirty-five to age sixty-five, and your mutual funds average 12 percent, you will have $873,000 tax-FREE at age sixty-five. You have invested only $90,000 (30 years x 3,000); the rest is growth, and you pay no taxes. The Roth IRA is a very important tool in virtually anyone’s Total Money Makeover. Start with any match you can get, and then fully fund Roth IRAs. Be sure the total you are putting in is 15 percent of your total household gross income. If not, go back to 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457s, or SEPPs (for the self-employed), and invest enough so that the total invested is 15 percent of your gross annual pay. Example: Household Income $81,000 Husband $45,000 Wife $36,000 Husband’s 401(k) matches first 3%. 3% of 45,000 ($1,350) goes into the 401(k). Two Roth IRAs are next, totaling $10,000. The goal is 15% of 81,000, which is $12,150. You have $11,350 going in. So you bump the husband’s 401(k) to 5%, making the total invested $12,250.

I also needed what God has brought. I needed to lose control. I needed a broken heart. I needed to be dipped in the crucible of suffering. Why? I may never fully know. But the God who brings his children low does not do it for spite. He does it to awaken desire, like a pang of hunger in the newly risen phoenix that makes it unfurl its wings to fly. He does it to give us new eyes so that we might see the world in a new light. He does it to stop us from continuing down the path we’re on and to set us on a new one. He grants us weakness so that we might not trust too much in our own strength. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Your job as an EntreLeader is to make sure when your team member leaves your office they take their monkey with them. The first step is to give them some ideas for options and instruct them to come back with three good ways to solve the problem and a suggested course of action. The next step is to teach your team to come to your office with a problem only after they have found three or more possible solutions and a suggested course of action. That makes for some great discussions and teachable moments as you show them how you would make the call. After solving problems and making the call with your help several times, the best team members begin to see the pattern you use and can do what you do. The final step is very personally rewarding.

One of the biggest benefits I have found in this process, which I didn’t recognize on the front end, is by doing the spousal interview you will discover if your hire is married to crazy. Have you ever hired a great person whose crazy spouse completely took away their ability to win because they were doing maintenance on crazy? I was interviewing a very sharp young man for our broadcast department and explained to him that our final interview would be an informal dinner with his spouse. A few hours later I got a screaming and cussing phone call from his wife. She blew a gasket at the very thought that she had to be involved in her husband’s hiring. After she yelled and cussed for a minute or two she finally asked me, laced with profanity that I’ll leave out, “Why do you do this spouse interview anyway!” To which I responded, “To find people like you.” That poor guy gets his backbone ripped out every morning and maybe she gives it back to him at night if she hears a noise outside. Either he is a complete jellyfish, their marriage will end up in counseling, or they will get divorced. None of those options sounds like a productive team member. So the spousal interview might help you discover if the person is married to crazy; if they are, stay away.

In all these battles the Labour right has enormous reserves of political power. The Parliamentary Labour Party is overwhelmingly hostile to Jeremy Corbyn. Of the 232 Labour MPs no more than 20 can be relied on to back him. Back bench revolts, leaks, and public attacks by MPs opposed to the leadership are likely to be frequent. Some Labour left wingers hope that the patronage that comes with the leader’s position will appeal to the careerism of the right and centre MPs to provide Jeremy with the support he lacks. No doubt this will have some effect, but it will be limited. For a start it’s a mistake to think that all right wingers are venal. Some are. But some believe in their ideas as sincerely as left wingers believe in theirs. More importantly, the leading figures of the Labour right should not be seen as simply part of the Labour movement. They are also, and this is where their loyalty lies, embedded in the British political establishment. Commentators often talk as if the sociological dividing line in British politics lies between the establishment (the heads of corporations, military, police, civil service, the media, Tory and Liberal parties, etc, etc) on the one hand, and the Labour Party as a whole, the unions and the left on the other. But this is not the case. The dividing line actually runs through the middle of the Labour Party, between its right wing leaders and the left and the bulk of the working class members. From Ramsey MacDonald (who started on the left of the party) splitting Labour and joining the Tory government in 1931, to the Labour ‘Gang of Four’ splitting the party to form the SDP in 1981, to Neil Kinnock’s refusal to support the 1984-85 Miners Strike, to Blair and Mandelson’s neo-conservative foreign policy and neoliberal economic policy, the main figures of the Labour right have always put their establishment loyalties first and their Labour Party membership second. They do not need Jeremy Corbyn to prefer Cabinet places on them because they will be rewarded with company directorships and places in the Lords by the establishment. Corbyn is seen as a threat to the establishment and the Labour right will react, as they have always done, to eliminate this threat. And because the Labour right are part of the establishment they will not be acting alone. Even if they were a minority in the PLP, as the SDP founders were, their power would be enormously amplified by the rest of the establishment. In fact the Labour right today is much more powerful than the SDP, and so the amplified dissonance from the right will be even greater. This is why the argument that a Corbyn leadership must compromise with the right in the name of unity is so mistaken. The Labour right are only interested in unity on their terms. If they can’t get it they will fight until they win. If they can’t win they would rather split the party than unite with the left on the left’s terms. When Leon Trotsky analysed the defeat of the 1926 General Strike it was the operation of this kind of ‘unity’ which he saw as critical in giving the right the ability to disorganise the left. The collapse of the strike came, argued Trotsky, when the government put pressure on the right wing of the Labour movement, who put pressure on the left wing of the movement, who put pressure on the Minority Movement (an alliance of the Labour left and the Communist Party). And the Minority Movement put pressure on the CP…and thus the whole movement collapsed. To this day this is the way in which the establishment transmits pressure through the labour movement. The only effective antidote is political and organisational independence on the far left so that it is capable of mobilising beyond the ranks of the Labour Party and trade union bureaucracy. This then provides a counter-power pushing in the opposite direction that can be more powerful than the pressure from the right.

True freedom gives a man not only the right to make a right choice, but also the freedom to make a wrong choice. ~ Norman Ramsey, 1954

tell people not to be scared to put conditions on a financial gift. You could give them money only if they agree to go through Financial Peace University. You could give them a copy of this book or another one of my books, The Total Money Makeover, and “pay” them to write you a book report. You could require that they submit three monthly budgets to you as you continue to help them through a transitional time. If they accuse you of butting in, just remind them that they are ASKING you to butt in by giving them money. If they want your help, they need to take all of your help, not just your money. Third, I remind people that they can only help others if they have the cash on hand themselves. Never cosign a loan to “help” someone else, and never loan money to a friend or relative. That just keeps them in debt longer, strains the relationship, and keeps the cycle of destruction going.

I cannot think of a single thing in my life that doesn't bear the touch of others. I'm guessing you can't either. Of course we wish some of those chisel marks never happened--the ones that draw from us a plea for mercy, the ones that kindle a hunger for the renewal of all things. But other marks have been necessary to give us eyes to behold goodness, truth, and beauty we would not have known otherwise. Living with limits is one of the ways we enter into beauty we would not have otherwise seen, good work we would not have chosen, and relationships we would not have treasured. For the Christian, accepting our limits is one of the ways we are shaped to fit together as living stones into the body of Christ. As much as our strengths are a gift to the church, so are our limitations.

There is the question: “How is the word ‘truth’ properly used?” This is a question for the dictionary, not for philosophy’ (CP 6: 116, 1910). In a letter to Ottoline Morrell he puts his need for truth of a more transcendent sort thus: ‘the worship of my life … is Truth. That is the something greater than Man that seems to me most capable of giving greatness to Man. That is why I hate pragmatism’ (CP 6: liii, 1911). And that is why James hated logical atomism.

nor is it the set of feelings Beethoven had while composing it, nor is it our own state of mind: I would reply that whatever I was told, I would reject, and that not because the explanation was false but because it was an explanation. If I were told anything that was a theory, I would say, No, no! That does not interest me … What is ethical cannot be taught. If I could explain the essence of the ethical only by means of a theory, then what is ethical would be of no value whatsoever … For me a theory is without value. A theory gives me nothing.

The New York Times editorial board has since officially acknowledged the paper’s role in “slandering the unborn.” It wrote, “News organizations shoulder much of the blame for the moral panic that cast mothers with crack addictions as irretrievably depraved and the worst enemies of their children. The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and others further demonized Black women ‘addicts’ by wrongly reporting that they were giving birth to a generation of neurologically damaged children who were less than fully human and who would bankrupt the schools and social service agencies once they came of age.

The Amish are typically generous with their material possessions, money, and provisions. Not only do they give, but they help others as well. When

Give your children responsibilities and teach them the importance of sharing with and helping others.

What Joseph’s brothers meant for evil, God meant for good. (Gen 50:20) God meant for this prince, whose heart had been broken by his own people, to save them. And God meant to bring these people—the ones he had called to himself as his own—out of their peril and hunger and into a place where they would have to connect in their minds the life-giving provision of the king with the unearned mercy and grace of the prince. Though the brothers meant to kill the prince, he gave them life in his name—life to the fullest. (John 10:10)

Amish do not look to work to give them meaning. Within

In 1 Timothy 6:17, Paul tells Timothy, his young apprentice, “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.

God doesn’t want your strength. Never did. Never will. He wants to give you his.

By trying not to hope, we buy into a false peace. This peace is a controlled variable in our experiment. In reality, we're still grasping to control the outcome and manage how much we'll hurt in the end. To calm the mind storm, we need to give our fears over to the One who brings true peace.

We should have consulted each other before the event,” Caro said, staring up at him and ignoring Madeleine. “If you were the Aeneas to my Dido, think what a stir we could have caused.” Dido — the Carthaginian queen who stabbed herself in the heart after being abandoned by her Trojan lover. “You look very well, of course, but I have chosen a different consort.” Caro cast a flickering glance at Madeleine, just enough to make it clear that the actress was socially beneath her. “I have little love for Salford’s ward, but it does seem callous of you to parade this actress chit in front of the ton when you’d have everyone believe that your engagement to Lady Madeleine is a love match.” “You know how these things play,” he said, trying to sound bored. “Lady Madeleine could never attend an event such as this, and I’ve no intention of giving up all my entertainments.” “Just the same as always, aren’t you?” Caro said. “You hold all the power, and it’s all directed to your own ends. If I thought you were capable of change, I could forgive you — but you are just as selfish as you were ten years ago.

We should have consulted each other before the event,” Caro said, staring up at him and ignoring Madeleine. “If you were the Aeneas to my Dido, think what a stir we could have caused.” Dido — the Carthaginian queen who stabbed herself in the heart after being abandoned by her Trojan lover. “You look very well, of course, but I have chosen a different consort.” Caro cast a flickering glance at Madeleine, just enough to make it clear that the actress was socially beneath her. “I have little love for Salford’s ward, but it does seem callous of you to parade this actress chit in front of the ton when you’d have everyone believe that your engagement to Lady Madeleine is a love match.” “You know how these things play,” he said, trying to sound bored. “Lady Madeleine could never attend an event such as this, and I’ve no intention of giving up all my entertainments.” “Just the same as always, aren’t you?” Caro said. “You hold all the power, and it’s all directed to your own ends. If I thought you were capable of change, I could forgive you — but you are just as selfish as you were ten years ago.

We should have consulted each other before the event,” Caro said, staring up at him and ignoring Madeleine. “If you were the Aeneas to my Dido, think what a stir we could have caused.” Dido — the Carthaginian queen who stabbed herself in the heart after being abandoned by her Trojan lover. “You look very well, of course, but I have chosen a different consort.” Caro cast a flickering glance at Madeleine, just enough to make it clear that the actress was socially beneath her. “I have little love for Salford’s ward, but it does seem callous of you to parade this actress chit in front of the ton when you’d have everyone believe that your engagement to Lady Madeleine is a love match.” “You know how these things play,” he said, trying to sound bored. “Lady Madeleine could never attend an event such as this, and I’ve no intention of giving up all my entertainments.” “Just the same as always, aren’t you?” Caro said. “You hold all the power, and it’s all directed to your own ends. If I thought you were capable of change, I could forgive you — but you are just as selfish as you were ten years ago.

I have many names. The name my parents gave me. The name my equals gave me. The name my masters gave me. The name I gave myself. The name scorched into the wind when my body was ripped from my soul. A name gives something identity, and I've come to realize that a name doesn't matter if you didn't choose it yourself. I was born with the name Sofia Ramsey and I died with the names Fury and Ma thrown into the air with all the hatred and desperation a soul can muster. I'm gonna tell you about that day but it hasn't come yet. It's not today. I breathe slowly and a cooling comfort stirs my lungs. It's not today.

Little girls play with dolls. Little girls play weddings. Little girls had that creepy board game growing up in the nineties where there was a phone in the middle and a load of cards with what were supposed to be sexy teenage guys but actually more closely resembled middle-aged men on them who you would call and they would give you clues as to which one had a crush on you and where to meet them … like some kind of paedophile roulette.