Crown Financial Ministries is a Christian ministry with the mission of teaching financial principles which they believe are based on the Bible. I’m not very familiar with them, but they seem to be best known for their Money Life radio program. Their message focuses on removing all forms of debt, which strikes me as similar to Dave Ramsey.
Another central part of their curriculum is what they call the Crown Money Map, and it is currently free for a limited time. (Retail is $3.) New visitors can receive it either as a PDF or paper copy via snail mail. I thought it was worth a look.
Here’s a quick overview of their steps to financial freedom, which they call “destinations”. It is meant to be put on display and used interactively as a visual guide and reminder system.
- Destination 1 – Emergency Savings
- Destination 2 – Credit Cards Paid Off
- Destination 3 – Consumer Debt Paid Off
- Destination 4 – Save for Major Purchases
- Destination 5 – Buy Home and Begin Investing
- Destination 6 – Home Mortgage Paid Off
- Final Destination – True Financial Freedom
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We use the crown program at our church. If you use the video series they look like some cheesy thing from the early 90’s but the info is great. Last year our whole church went through the series, and I am working on starting up a new class with their stuff. It works good as a base to teach from.
http://cfm.informz.net/cfm/data/images/downloads/mmap-webversion20100426.pdf
It actually sounds a lot like “I Will Teach You to be Rich” by Ramit Sethi. I’m not a fan of that book. But most “personal finance books are about the same”
🙂
Never understood the “using religion as a basis for money management” thing, but whatever motivates people I guess. I actually like Dave Ramsey, but it seems like the religion stuff is forced into his advice and alienates the large percentage of the population that are either atheists/agnotistics or of other beliefs.
That said, in the financial context “Jesus saves” actually makes sense to everyone… ; )
Interesting approach. Removing all forms of debt makes me remember to 9signals message where they mentioned that avoiding debt is like getting financial freedom and I agree with them. Nice post, thanks.
I’m only 26 and pretty much a #5! I must be religious!
… or Atheist
Unless one has a really good credit card rate, I would think paying off credit cards should come before you gather an emergency fund. Having credit card debt at likely a very high rate sounds like a pretty good emergency to me, so why wait to pay it off?
THANK YOU, Mark Jackson.
Our family starting following GOD’S WILL for money management just a few years ago. My husband and I are in our 50s. How I wish we would have started years ago but we ENCOURAGE anyone to just start. Following Crown Financial, Mary Hunt, Dave Ramsey we see the similarities that have helped us to turn the ship of our financial picture to chart a new course for our family. Giving (we started with less but now give 10%), saving for emergencies (now have $10K), use a contingency fund (we call it a “holds fund”) for irregular expenses, saving for major expenses (ie. weddings of children, etc.) paying off all debts (except mortgage). In the past few years we have repaid $40K of mortgage, have repaid personal and medical debts, cash flowed 3 of our children’s weddings all while maintaining a spending plan an emergency fund and tithing. My husband’s income has increased steadily through this time. Alone we could never have done these things. God has provided and we give him the GLORY!