If I were to write a letter to Dave Ramsey

It would go a little something like this. (Fair warning this is a brutally honest post.)

Dear Mr. Ramsey

I think that your total money makeover has a lot of great, practical principles when it comes to managing money. But I often feel like some of your advice is just not possible for every person to grab a hold of. Now of course I am probably wrong about this but it's just how I feel.

Everytime I pick up one of your books and read about what the monthly budget should look like and how much money should be going into every catagory I cry, I just cry; because we don't make enough money to place money into every catagory.

We don't do everything perfect 100% of the time but we don't live foolishly either. The biggest portion of our money goes into paying the monthly rent and while, yeah, we could probably find someplace cheeper, but when you live in a city, the cheeper places end up being in the ghetto and I really don't want to raise my kids in the ghetto. Mr Ramsey you make me feel like a horrible person because I don't want to raise my kids in the ghetto. And even the place we live in now is small and modest and barely fits the 3 of us already.

The only thing we use our credit cards for is to buy gas and then we pay it off at the end of every single month. So we have no credit card debt. But we do have student loans and 1 car loan. So since we can't give back our education does that mean we give up our only car and mode of transportation for this family of 3 soon to be 4? Everything we have in our home we own and we didn't pay for it, all of our possessions except our car and clothing were given to us.

There are a lot of things, Mr Dave Ramsey, that my family and I would like to have but we don't indulge ourselves and go out and buy them. Not only so but the one time my husband contacted a finacial counselor through a program that you recommended; the counselor told us that it sounded like we were doing everything that we could possibly do and the only other thing that we needed was to make more money. It's so simple! Why didn't my husband and I just think of that for ourselves?

Already my husband needs to work 2jobs to meet the monthly (normal) bills, we don't have extra money to set aside to invest so that we can "make more money." And your program doesn't encourage me it just makes me feel bad, and makes me cry because my little family is trying it's very hardest and we can't even make it by.

But even though I may not like you my husband wants to give you a try and I'm skeptical very skeptical and you'll probably make me cry a lot; because it's probably more of an issue of a lack of trust and a whole lot of fear on my part but I'm willing to be submissive. But do I really need to move my family to the ghetto? Do we really need to give up our one and only vehicle? Do we really need to cut up our credit cards if the only thing we use them for is to buy gas and we pay it off at the end of every month? Is it back to work for me and hello child care for my baby but doesn't that just defeat your principles since Child Care would only add to our monthly expenses?

So what do you have to say to families like mine that try and try and try but can't come up with 1000 emergency fund. Whose husbands are exhausted because they are already working the hardest that they can work. Whose wives cry every month because of unexpected bills cause us to be in more dire straits. What do you say to those who are doing the best they can do? Could you please stop making us feel like losers?

Sincerely

Someone that really doesn't like you very much but has to give you try because if she doesn't her husband is going to go crazy.

P.S. I forgot to mention that our car loan has a monthly payment of 199.99 for 5 years and we've already been paying it for 2 1/2 yrs now. And we bought it as good used car too, so does that mean we can keep the car?