I’m a big fan of Dave Ramsey and give much of the credit for our financial turn-around to his Financial Peace University program. In fact, friends that we’ve referred to Dave Ramsey’s program have also reported that for the first time they’re on the same page as a couple concerning their finances. I must admit though that the book Financial Peace University wasn’t that great — rather the 3 month program was useful.

In addition to FPU, Dave Ramsey is mostly known for his daily (week day) radio show and his book “Total Money Makeover.” Over time I’ve come across a lot of information about Dave Ramsey both on his official websites (of which he has many) as well as in forums and blogs. As a benefit to GFD readers, I’ve consolidated the most prominant Dave Ramsey links and resources for easy reference. Some of the Dave Ramsey resources require a subscription (like his “My Total Money Makeover” online subscription) but there is a lot of good information available for free. If you’re new to Dave Ramsey, I would check out the summary on his “Baby Steps” in particular. It is one of the best, most focused approaches to financial goals I’ve come across.
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The latest issue of Money magazine has serveral useful tidbits. Kate Ashford mentions that auto insurance rates are expected to decrease for the first time in eight years. However the decrease is so modest that rates will almost stay flat.

Shop for the best auto insurance rates

That doesn’t mean you can’t save money on car insurance. By doing a little bit of shopping around you can sometimes save litterally hundreds of dollars. If you haven’t shopped rates for a couple of years, now would be a good time.

Save an emergency fund and increase your deductible

One thing Kate mentions is that increasing your deductibles from $300 to $500, for example, can save you up to 30% on your premiums. If you were paying $850 a year on auto insurance a 30% savings would mean $255. In other words, even if you ended up paying your entire $500 deductible, you’d still end up $55 ahead.

One reason a short-term emergency fund is so nice to have is that you can increase your deductible and feel totally comfortable that you’ll have the money to cover the higher deductible if you need it.

Where to shop for auto insurance quotes

Here are a few website to start shopping for auto insurance rates:

• Allstate auto insurance quotes – I recently saw a commercial mentioning that you can get a ballpark quote without having to enter personal information like many sites. Good idea.
• Progressive
• Geico
• insweb.com – Mentioned in the Money magazine article. I wasn’t familiar with them previously.
• State Farm
• MetLife
• Farmers’
• AIG
• Nationwide
• Amica

Please post in the comments if you know of any others or if you’ve had particularly positive or negative experiences with particular providers. I’ll llet everyone know if I have any success finding a lower rate. I’m off to quote land.

In my previous post about GTD for personal finances (part 1), I covered some basic ways to apply GTD principles in managing your personal finances. Here are 5 more ways you can apply GTD principles to your finances.

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I’m a big fan of David Allen’s book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Enough so that I actually modeled the name of my site after his book. The reason I did so was that I found many of his principles for personal productivity had a very real application in personal finances. I found that I wanted to achieve the same “stress-free” environment with my personal finances as with my personal productivity.

By applying David Allen’s personal productivity principles to personal finances I’ve been able to make some vital distinctions that have helped me manage my money more effectively. Some principles have a very general application like “use a trusted system” while others have a very direct application like “operate from a zero base.” Here is my take on how you can apply GTD principles to your personal finances. It’s ok if you don’t know anything about GTD. These principles will still make sense and are sound principles to follow.

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