Our motto: A strong foundation is made of stone.
In order to build a strong financial foundation, you must have the right tools: knowledge, critical thinking, and sound decision-making.
We'll help you navigate the pitfalls of debt elimination and avoid the logical fallacies that negatively influence your thinking. Financial celebrities push their wares through cutesy slogans, fancy graphics, and other marketing techniques, often at the expense of restricting information and obscuring the truth. When entrepreneurs build their brands on lies, deceit, and discrimination while pushing expensive products onto people in debt, that's unethical.
If you're not familiar with our philosophy and methodology, you can find a wealth of information at the Facebook group A Relaxed Approach to Personal Finance: Inspired by Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps and the Crown Money Map. The name has changed a few times, so it may not be exactly that title, but the link will take you there. Just answer the questions to join and search for Anthony Stone. There is also a summary on this blog.
We created the concept of the Relaxed Approach to Personal Finance Philosophy and Methodology, which is an alternative to Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps and the Crown Money Map. The philosophy is built upon principles (truths) and tenets (beliefs), while The Stone Money Foundations represents the actual methodology (how to do it). We sometimes apply these terms to other programs even though their creators don't use them.
Anthony Stone was the Administrator for the Relaxed group for over two years after taking over from Troy Monete, who incidentally has returned as the Administrator. From the beginning, we emphasized that Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover and Baby Steps are flawed in several respects. Despite these flaws, we also emphasized that the program is a viable way to eliminate debt and start building wealth.
As we listened to Dave Ramsey's podcasts, read his blog posts, and saw how other groups practically worshipped his "teachings" through the years, we realized that he had strayed away from a primary focus of helping people and had become a toxic bully focused more on selling products, denigrating anyone who does't bow down to his way of doing things, and worming his way into media and other venues. Ramsey has even resorted to outright lying about the Debt Avalanche vs. Debt Snowball. Sadly, Dave Ramsey followers refuse to see this, or perhaps it's a case of doublethink.
Because of this, our posts in the Relaxed group became a little more antagonistic and critical of Ramsey and his Personalities (who all just parrot what he says). We stand by our position that the criticism was fair and warranted, even if others chose not to believe the truth. Dissenters often found their way into the group and posted only staunch support of the Baby Steps and underlying Total Money Makeover. Choosing to following Ramsey's program is fine, but to ignore other viable methods and claim they don't work is not.
Participation in the group dwindled and we made the decision for Anthony Stone to leave because we felt our approach had strayed too far from the group's original intent and was appealing only to a select group of members (which we're nonetheless thankful for), and thus alienating all others. We still highly recommend the group because it's a great community to discuss personal finance, particularly debt elimination.
Stone Money Foundations are not a new concept or program. The term rebrands what we created as the Relaxed Approach Philosophy and Methodology. Because Anthony Stone is no longer the Administrator of the group, we felt that it was only fair to refrain from using Relaxed as our own. Aside from name changes, there is little else different.
This blog will teach you the tools you need to lay the foundation for your financial future. Knowledge, critical thinking, and sound decision-making are of paramount importance. We don't believe in blind followership. You must take control of your own future and spend some time educating yourself about the options available to you. This is why The Stone Money Foundations are superior to the Baby Steps and Crown Money Map in many ways--they offer flexibility that the other methodologies don't.
