Ever read many online recommendations for a book, to the point where you pick it up, and your expectations exceed the value you receive from it?

I like Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps to Get Out of Debt. I like the concept of Financial Peace. I like the debt snowball plan. I believe that they work. Sell all your crap to get the consumer debt on the road to gonesville -- makes total sense to me.

Those are the only three things I like about his Total Money Makeover. It's true that you can't go into debt if you don't borrow. It's true that with an emergency fund crises are merely inconveniences.

If DR wanted a larger audience, he'd have skinned the TMM down to eight pages of pure financial golden wisdom. However, by padding it with cruft to justify hardcover binding and $2X.XX price tag he dilutes his message and limits his audience. The letters he chooses to share are from white families who live in areas where $120,000 single-family residences in decent neighbourhoods can still be bought. I did not read anything about $950/month daycare costs. I did not see pictures of families with Samoan, Nepali, Laotian, Caribbean, African-American, or Hispanic descent.

I looked at the Windermere.com real estate site. 5163 matches for homes for sale from $125,000 to $200,000, two+ bedrooms, one+ bathroom, 800 sq ft to 1120 sq ft. I allowed for manufactured and multi-family properties, and year built ranged from 1906 to 2005.

When I reduced the range to Washington state, the number of properties fell to 1630. When I reduced the range to Seattle, I had zero results. If you have a $150,000 mortgage on a three bedroom SFR in Seattle, you're not in over your head, you're floating, buoyantly, on a sea of equity.

DR also skirts around white-collar crime. He refutes the "wrong-headed" sects who settle for financial mediocrity. A Christian's duty is to create wealth to be used for the glory of God. If we believe it is morally wrong to be wealthy, then the only rich people will be pimps and drug dealers.

There is a difference between wealth and living below your means. If you give a good portion of your disposable income to social justice, and use it to heal the sick, counsel the incarcerated, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, you're giving glory to God. Is it giving glory to God when one hands over money to white collar criminals who oppress the poor and try to depress the standard of living of many as they nourish the elite in the way of "investment?" Or who suck up to the state for tax breaks? Can you tell the difference between someone who merely pays lip service to helping the poor and oppressed so s/he can get elected and someone whose humble and direct actions speak for themselves? If by aiding the poor directly you reduce the number of people in prison, or in the hospital, or at food banks aren't you investing in your community? The money that would otherwise be spent could be invested for the betterment of all, rather than guns and gated communities and planned subdivisions to make sure society's smelly rejects are as far from us as possible.

Pimps are people who profit from the prostitution of other people. Prostitutes have their self-esteems and their freedoms crushed by literally "working for the man." Drug dealers offer empty promises and addictive substances -- they enslave their customers. The borrower is always a slave to the lender. Ramsey gets that quote right, and uses it often, but he overlooks the many, many instances of corporate misconduct, the growing disparity between stagnant workers' wages and rising executive salaries and perks.

I tried investing to grow my income. However, I looked only at balance sheets and growth, rather than the values and purpose of the companies. Imagine my surprise when, time and time again, my companies with the stellar 10-K and 10-Q documents had "misstated earnings," taken charges, or had been met with class action suits by stockholders. Who's behind buying up smaller banks and credit card companies who have your business, then turning around and squeezing people with rising net worths and improving credit ratings with fees and penalties that used to be levied against the financially irresponsible and overwhelmed? Bigger banks. Who's charging 10% or greater premium increases annually against you, who may be actually claimfree, because you either spent most of your life without requiring credit, or have yet to spend most of the rest of your life? Insurance companies.

And if he hadn't overlooked those instances, I wonder if Sean Hannity and Bill Frist would have given Ramsey his backjacket blurbs.

I don't need to be hoarding money that can go to the poor. I can adjust my expectations of security in this life and my outlook, decide there are more important things to do with my life than partake in class envy or feed the tapeworm economy, such as work for social justice and community reinvestment for the betterment of all. Helping the poor is a Gospel imperative, addressed with vigour to all Christians, who are never allowed to pass by their neighbour who has been stricken with misfortune (cf. Luke 10,33-35). So why give to entities that, through offshoring and outsourcing of jobs, and stagnation of wages, seek to create more of the poor within our own borders?

And if I decide to achieve financial peace through being debtfree, and to commit greater quantities of disposable income to social justice, alleviating poverty, feeding the hungry and ministering to the sick, Dave Ramsey's baby steps to get out of debt are all I need. I don't need propaganda aimed at the Farm Belt zipcodes.