I picked up the automatic millionaire at the bookstore and spent the next 2 hours reading it in their chair. I finished it and then bought it and brought it home. The next day I went out and bought all the rest of your books and spent the last 2 months reading them.
I was profoundly affected. I, a coffee drinker my whole life and that would be a 3 starbucks a day person, completely gave up coffee. My family was in shock but that\’s where I began. We are in a weird situation, I came to find out by reading your book.We had plenty of money for retirement we just had no concept 0f what we did with our money.First I began to read statements and know where we stood. I realized we were saving so much, 20% for retirement, and were always broke and near the point where we would almost have to sell our home. The 20% is not negotiable as my husband is a government employee and has that taken out whether he likes it or not. But we are always cash broke. When we retire we will be doing excellent, so your book affected the \”now\” how we are responsible with all the little Latte factors that were so out of control. In the last 2 months I have put my family on a budget, in 20 years we have never been on a budget or known what we spend. I know all our assets, accounts, interest rates. Just another example we had 50k in a noninterest earning account for 20 years. I moved it to a money market. I shaved off 1000 dollars a month in wasteful spending and we are going to be able to keep our home. We make well over 200k a year and were going in the negative 1000 dollars a month. This last week I got to put 600.00 dollars into our savings account. My husband was shocked. Your book has changed my life. This year my income has been about 1/3 of it\’s usual. I have my own Real Estate business. I am so grateful for your frankness and simplicity. I am certain that if my income had been much higher like previous years I would have squandered it and felt broke and had NO idea where our money was or what it was doing. Now that you have given me the tools I am confident that when the good times are back I will be prudent and live well below my means. Every singe day each member of my family has to write in the log what they spent for the day. That has transformed our spending. I am committed to doing that for the rest of my life. I think you are such a blessing because you encourage and give step by step ways to manage your life. Just today I called to see if we had the best rate on our term life insurance. I used the chapter from smart couples finish rich and called one of the numbers you recommended. It was awesome, easy. I am not exagerating when I say my husband and I 2 months ago had NO IDEA where our money was. One more example: I reviewed our checking account statement for the first time in 20 years and realized we had 200 dollars of overdraft charges on there. We had the money in savings to transfer to our checking but we never thought about it because we knew we had overdraft so we didn\’t worry about it. Imagine, one year of 200 dollars per month. I wonder how many thousands of dollars we spent on that without realizing. You can be certain there will be no more charges like that. You have saved my family thousands and thousands of dollars in the future. You have made me realize that God calls us to be good stewarts of what he gives us. I was being so lazy and irresponsible. I hated accounting and math. I now know it doesn\’t matter if you like it, it must be done. I can never thank you enough. I hope God continues to rain down blessing upon you.
Kimbery Newton
