The sooner you realize that, the less time and money you can waste trying to eliminate it. The debt really isn’t the problem: the worry about debt is. As soon as you become ambivalent to your debt, the better quality of life you can live.

Besides, being debt-free is not going to make you rich. Many rich people are in debt and they even manage to get richer while being in debt. The fantasies about wealth were written decades ago. You NEED debt in order to get rich!

Huh. I’ve spent too much time in support forums, I think, because the more I thought about it, the more I realized what this reminds me of. There’s a website (flylady.net) for helping people (mostly women) get a handle on housework. It’s not to everyone’s taste, but the people who find success with it generally seem to be able to take what works for them and leave the rest: “I follow the FlyLady method, but I…”

And I see this book as having the same potential. It may be nigh-impossible for 99.99% of the world to follow as written, but it may be a good starting point for rethinking the attitudes.

And it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find that people who had success with Okeeffe’s methods ended up modifying things into a close approximation of Ramsey’s Baby Steps: “Well, I can’t justify saving six months of expenses, but I can do one month. And then I’ll start paying the bills in earnest.”

But there, I’m projecting. I struggled to keep any amount of money in savings when there were debts to pay off. (I had $2000, but that was only because that was the minimum for free checking.) Beyond that? Ha. I wanted those debts gone gone gone far more than I wanted a cushy safety net of savings.

In 1995, I was earning about $28000. Six months of expenses would have been about $8000. Keep $6000 extra in savings? Not a chance.

When you get to the ends of the range, things are pretty close to black-and-white: one cent is too little, a million dollars is too much.

In the middle of the range, things are mushier. $500 might be a perfectly acceptable first-step amount for one person, but another might need $2000.

Having said that… I agree with you. I think six months savings is an unrealistic initial goal, and it’s setting the vast majority up for failure, where failure = eternal minimum payments + an emergency fund that never quite breaks the two-month level.

It’s a good goal as part of an overall plan, but it’s too large at the outset. Like telling someone who’s 50lbs overweight that they should focus on running the Boston Marathon before they even start worrying about how many veggies they’re eating.

It might work for a tiny percentage of people, but it wouldn’t work for me. (And by “tiny percentage”, I mean that I would be surprised if it worked for even the 1% MAYBE you mention. I’m thinking more along the lines of parts per million.)

Combine that with the dubious logic of some of the other statements you mentioned, and the overall impression is that the author doesn’t really understand how the average person relates to money.

Makes me wonder if the author’s views have changed over the past 15 years – and if they have, whether her writings reflect that.

Your average Joe and Jane Sixpack saving six months’ worth of salary before they even make more than a smidgeon of progress on their debt? Seriously?

Maybe — MAYBE — one percent of folks can pull that off without ending up in a WORSE financial place than they were when they started.

(At least Keeffe suggests that all but one credit card should be cut up. That’s worth something, I suppose.)

If it gets the reader to break out of the financial rut, it’s good.

However, the writer doesn’t seem to have a great grasp of money psychology. (Not that I do, either, but really, “Paying the minimum will make you want to quit using the cards and start living in the present.”? Since when?)

Quick wins are good, the quicker the better. It takes some work to save $1000, but it can be done in a matter of months for many (if not most) people. Six months worth of expenses? Unless you’ve got some windfall heading your way, that’s likely a multiyear project. If you have some credit cards with $1000-$2000 on them, you could zap a half-dozen of those in the same time. And you’d get the thrill, the absolute knowledge that you are further on your way.

If it breaks the reader out of the financial rut, I can’t argue with it. But… I don’t think it would have worked for me.