Anyone listen to Dave Ramsey

In My Humble Opinion
1

I listen to his radio show now and then. He has some good ideas but I don’t really get his obsession with not having debt. He’s mostly a 1 trick pony. I agree there are people who get into a lot of debt but not everyone has problems with debt.

To me he treats people with big debt like an alcoholic treats booze - he tells them to stay away from all types of debt forever. He can’t seem to grasp that many people use debt and don’t run up $50,000 on Visa cards to buy a bunch of junk.

I will add that before listening to his show I had no idea how many people were drowning in debt for stuff other than cars and houses.

2

Listen & am a fan except that we tune out all the Christian-lite stuff as irrelevant.

I agree that he is highly focused on debt to the exclusion of giving any actionable advice on other topics. But as we have seen recenly, debt is the 800 lb gorilla that is killing many families. If more people had excised debt from their lives I venture to say that we’d not be in this fucked up situation today.

I don’t follow him strictly but we have a large cushion, don’t carry any credit card debt, & used the snowball method to pay of about 15K in a year. While getting out of credit card debt wasn’t life changing it is nice to know that we only spend what we’ve got.

3

I guess part of the problem with the show is so many of the callers only call up to talk about debt so that limits the topics.

I really prefer Clark Howard since his show covers a much wider range of topics and he doesn’t have 1 piece of advice for everyone. It’s funny that Ramsey hates credit cards and Howard hates debit cards.

4

He is the nuclear bomb option of finances. “It’s the only way to be sure.”

Yes, there are many people who are responsible with money out there, but I have heard his show and the ones who call him are usually the ones who need a firm hand, so to speak.

Not everyone needs his advice, and he is awfully strident about his way being The Way, but I do admit if you follow his advice, you will be debt-free. No wiggle room for error, there.

I can’t listen to him too much because of his preachiness and political rants, but I think his financial advice is sound. You will be safe if you follow it, and it is easy to understand.

I do tend to think he is too strict on things like student loans, but I can see how people get too used to having monthly payments for everything and overborrow.

5

The thing is that the people who use debt responsibly aren’t going to be the ones who have to listen to someone like Dave Ramsey. So yeah, he’s going to say to not carry any debt.

6

The real problem is materialism. Too many people want 2 fancy cars, a big fancy house, big screen TVs, boats, jetskis, vacation, etc. And they want those things no matter what their income is.

If you simply decide not to buy a lot of that stuff you won’t need debt.

7

I’m a big fan of his program and have been following it since March. I’m working his “baby steps” pretty slowly but just the basics of getting on a written budget every month has honestly been life-changing. My fiancee and I have never gotten along better as the budget has eliminated a lot of money tension and we have been able to cash flow a lot of things that we’ve always had trouble paying for (like my son’s day camp.)

Sure, Ramsey teaches basic common sense stuff - but he doesn’t claim to do otherwise. He does spend most of his time telling people to swear off debt but I also hear him give all sorts of advice in regards to buying/selling homes, investing in mutual funds, etc… so he’s not just a one-trick pony.

Like another poster, I also tune him out whenever he talks religion or politics, but everything else he has to say is really worth listening to.

8

Agreed. Like when I hear people rant about how you used to be able to support a family on one income instead of two like you “have” to nowadays. I point out that a one family income is perfectly feasible, you just won’t have blackberries/iPhones, a car for everyone who can drive, a fancy-ass tv in every room of the house, central air, high speed unlimited internet, tons of new clothes whenever you feel like it, etc.

9

zweisamkeit - One of my co-workers asked me sincerely if I had ot work for a living because I was able to pay for a transmission for my car without having to put it on credit. For most of the people I work with, doing without is just not something they can fathom, and the same people are the ones who’ve maxed out their credit and bouncing checks. When my transmission went out, they were saying “just buy a new car - you can afford it.” I told them I could afford it because I don’t buy new cars. I like my paid-off 12 year old stationwagon.

One co-worker was talking about how unfair it was that the bank was charging multiple bounced check fees, and in the next sentence talking about how her family (husband and one kid) needed a bigger house because 2300 sq ft just wasn’t enough room. It boggles the mind.

StG

10

I have a theory that America is really based on 2 things:

Bigger is better
More is better

And I also believe that Christmas is the perfect holiday for America since it’s all about getting more stuff. A lot of stores would not survive if Christmas did not exist.

In a way it’s surprising it took so long for banks to figure out how to give out mortgages to people who didn’t qualify for them. Car dealers had that going decades ago.

11

Yep. I moved out a year ago so I could be on my own a bit before getting married (this Halloween). I’m renting a 380 sq ft studio. Everyone and their gramma asked why. 1 - it’s cheaper, 2 - I spend most of my time in one small area ANYWAY, so why not? 3 - why should I have a room that I’d need to buy a couch, coffeetable, etc for when my fiance already has that stuff?

I make my lunches 90% of the time for lunch, including batch cooking and freezing. My tv is a donated-by-my-fiance 9 year old Curtis Mathes model from Kmart (if he didn’t have that, I just would’ve gotten internet and not bothered with cable). When my 18 year old car was next to dead almost two years ago, my “new” car was a then 5 year old used model, even though everyone said, “OMG! Why? You can lease a brand new one for cheaper!!!”

I’m going to get slipcovers for my fiance’s couch and loveseat, because we can’t stand the upholstery pattern. “Why don’t you just buy new ones?” There’s nothing WRONG with them structurally; I just hate the flower pattern on them. Why should I spend many hundreds on new ones?

The rampant consumerism and "must have"itis that plagues this country (even through this recession) disgusts me. And I say that fully admitting I know I have frivolous spending, too.

12

Dave Ramsey’s advice is targeted for the same people who call up Suze Orman and ask if they can afford a $65,000 Lexus on their $21,000 salary and five-figure credit card debt. He’s talking to people who haven’t a lick of financial sense.

His show is not meant for people who have their finances under control.

13

What is kind of surprising is he gets a lot of callers who have gone to college - I know because many of them talk about student loans. But I guess getting a BA degree doesn’t mean you can’t spend way beyond your means.

14

After getting married, my wife and I used the snowball method to quickly pay off our student loans, car loan, and credit card debt - about $15000 total I think. Then we closed/cut up all of our credit cards. Not that we really had a problem with credit cards; but we discovered we don’t need them. We pay cash/debit cards for everything now. We have a modest (2000 sq ft house) and two kids and get by just fine on my single salary, which is respectable but would not be considered high.

We recently refinanced our mortgage to a 15-yr fixed rate of 4.625%, and have no other debt. So we’re feeling pretty good. If Dave Ramsey can help get people out of dept and keep them out, that goes a long, long way toward financial security.

15

His basic, core advice is fine, but his overall personal philosophy and one-size-fits-all advice leaves me cold. I much prefer Clark Howard and Ric Edelman, who see that sometimes a mortgage can be a smart financial strategy, for example, and who also aren’t judgmental bullies with shady personal financial backgrounds.

16

Well, I have a pretty high IQ and a law degree from Duke, but my parents never taught me anything about managing money. No wait, they taught me, “Just get whatever you want and money will magically appear to pay for it.” Which, don’t get me wrong, was really nice. They both grew up with lots of siblings and little money, and I think it was a point of pride for them to be able to give me pretty much anything I wanted.

The problem is, I never learned how to deal with money. I got a credit card in college, which my parents paid for me, and it inculcated really bad habits. I know this is just pathetic, but it was only in the last year or so (I’m 36) that I realized we have to save some money each month to have on hand for car and house repairs, if nothing else. In the past, we would spend all the money we made, the car would break, and we “had to” put it on the card.

We also put clothes, restaurant meals, vacations, and other idiotic crap on the card. What can I say? We were morons.

And now I know that I cannot be trusted with a credit card. “Oh, I’ll just put this on and pay it off right away” turns into $10K faster than a blink of an eye. So the Ramsey ideas are helping us: no credit cards, be frugal, pay off the smallest thing first so you stay excited about it, and use the snowball method. No, we don’t have gazelle-like intensity. But we are living within our means and knocking out over a thousand dollars of debt each month, which is a huge improvement.

Oh yeah, and school loans? Boy do I wish I had a time machine. I just took the maximum I could each year, including living expenses, assuming with my fancy degree I’d pull in $100K a year and pay it off easily. For the past six years, I’ve had no income. Woops. Lucky I married a super-genius go-getter.

17

I don’t listen to Ramsey but I’ve read a couple of his books. He makes sense- get out of debt, save for rain- though I think the Christian add in is irrelevant and largely marketing. He seems more geared to people on middle class incomes than Orman who increasingly takes more of the calls of the “I’ve got $1.2 mil in retirement, $600,000 in equity, earn $500,000 per year, but can’t decide if I can afford to buy that $85,000 panda fur full length coat I’m lusting after” (here’s a hint: you’re calling into a talk show about it, clearly you have reservations for some reason) and the “21K per year/Lexus driver wannabe” mentioned above.

I think both offer some advice that is good but not really feasible. Suze for example recently told a middle class caller who’d inherited something like $500,000 they had’t expected to save everything but 3% ($15,000) of it in savings. I’ll admit that’s practical, but if I inherited 500K- I’d save most of it, I really would, but I’m going to have fun with at least 10% of it.

I’m something like a sit-com character: if I inherited $500,000, rest assured that somehow by the end of the 30 minute episode I’d have been presented with an “out of the blue” bill for $498,989. I’ve also known too many misers (my grandmother, my sister, a family friend, others) who lost it all due to illness or old age or stock crashes or else died before they could enjoy any of it. Also, whenever I come into ‘found money’ (never once the $500k amount) I did the mature thing: pay debts, savings, IRA, etc.- but somehow the “wacky neighbor deus ex machina” sitcom device took most of it sooner or later or, more recently, my IRA going waaaaaay down overnight.
For this reason and I’ll admit it’s shamelessly immature I have a certain “I must piss some of it away” need. At least when I’m living in the flophouse I’ll be able to smile when I think of what happened in Nyawlins stayin’ in Nyawlins.:wink:

18

I once worked with a financial advisor who refused to take clients who were fans of Ramsey, Orman, et al. In his experience, these people didn’t want his advice, they wanted someone who would sell them what Ramsey et al. told them to buy, and he found that much of the advice they got was unsuitable for their particular situation, if not outright counterproductive to what they said their goals were. But, y’know, Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, Jim Cramer or whoever said it, so it must be good advice. :rolleyes:

19

I have a severe problem with him. I heard that one of his big tips was to not buy a new car, but a really good second hand car. Yeah, right. I needed to hear that. The really good second hand car that i bought is the reason that i had to buy a new one. Since then, I have loathed him, as a financial adviser.

hh

20

This guy kind of sounds like the guy who did the Finances section of the Marriage classes* my fiance and I went to earlier this year. Guy was very anti-credit card. Never ever ever ever ever ever ever get one; you’ll go into debt!

So I said that I have a credit card that I use for just about every single purchase because I get points that turn into a cash gift card. As he was about to pounce on me, I said, "I deduct each credit card purchase from my checking account balance, then when I make a card payment, I just go and add up all the purchases in the register** and make the payment of that amount. If I don’t have money in the checking account for whatever the purchase is, I… don’t buy it.

So he basically mumbled about how that’s a good strategy and all but most people won’t be able to be that disciplined so don’t ever ever ever ever have a credit card!

:rolleyes:

  • Have to take about 6ish classes about marriage, living together, getting along with inlaws, etc.

** That’s right, I’m 27 and I keep a register. I also use online banking, but I find a register far more reliable for transactions that take awhile to process.