Total Money Makeover?

[dihappy]

Any you guys/gals read this?
I also purchased the DVD's love it!

I read it last year and have become a big fan of Dave Ramsey.

Trying to pay off my debt and will not be looking back!

[Lambda Force]

I hope you paid cash.

[Lumberjack98]

Yes I've read it and been to the live event.

If you enjoyed that, you really should go through his Financial Peace University. It covers much more than the Total Money Makeover.

My wife and I took that class as well as brought it to our church. We also taught Generation Change to the teenagers. We've drank the Kool-Aid!!!

Remember, "You've got to live like no one else, so later, you can live like no one else."

If your friends and family aren't making fun of you, you're not doing it right.

[dihappy]

I hope you paid cash.

LOL, i did.

[knotquiteawake]

We went to the one weekend seminar. Thanks to Daves tips we paid off $58,000 in debt over the course of 16 months and are now totally debt free. We will be buying a house next year Lord willing and that will hopefully be our only debt.

[Divided Attention]

We have been to the class, have the University, and while we don't follow the envelopes to the letter, we have only our house as debt, pay cash for everything, paid off a huge sum in credit card debt and have not had credit cards in over 10 years and don't miss it. While it is no secret, it is good sense! The best thing we ever did was lay aside the 6months of expenses. Makes the whole unemployment thing a little less scary. Only wish we had found it before we ever amassed the revolving credit debt in the first place. Ahhh we live and learn.

[74novaman]

Best engagement gift my wife and I got was financial peace university. Helped us start married life with the right attitude about budgeting, debt and money in general.

[MasterOfNone]

Does Ramsey still completely disregard the value of maintaining good credit? It seems that everything I have heard from him on the subject is that nobody needs to have credit. But we see that many things use your credit to judge you, such as potential employers, utility providers, and insurance companies.
I recognize that he has some great ideas, but it seems that he tends to overly "dumb it down." Considering his debt snowball, he encourages paying off the smallest debts first (even if they are not the debts with the highest interest rates) so you "feel" you've accomplished something. But the fastest way to pay off debt is to pay toward the highest-rate debt first to minimize the additional interest.
It's good that he makes things simple. But I dislike the idea of doing things inefficiently for the sake of simplicity.

[chasfm11]

Does Ramsey still completely disregard the value of maintaining good credit? It seems that everything I have heard from him on the subject is that nobody needs to have credit. But we see that many things use your credit to judge you, such as potential employers, utility providers, and insurance companies.
I recognize that he has some great ideas, but it seems that he tends to overly "dumb it down." Considering his debt snowball, he encourages paying off the smallest debts first (even if they are not the debts with the highest interest rates) so you "feel" you've accomplished something. But the fastest way to pay off debt is to pay toward the highest-rate debt first to minimize the additional interest.
It's good that he makes things simple. But I dislike the idea of doing things inefficiently for the sake of simplicity.

The sophisticated weight loss and body building books neither sell well (in large volumes) nor account for a large volume of people doing the right things in either category. The most successful ways of helping people to loose weight or get in better shape seem to be the simple plans. I don't think that personal finances are any different. In a "Body for Life", the author talks about the first step in developing an exercise program to simply get up off the chair and move in place during a TV show. Building on that success, many readers of his book have gone on to more extensive exercise programs. I personally believe that building on success, as the Kaisan method does, is the most consistently successful way, regardless of the topic. Dave Ramsey just uses a set of structured financial steps to provide both stability and a feeling of success. His popularity proves that what he is doing works, at least for me. I've given copies of his book to both of our kids.

There is no question that Fair Issac (FICO) slants their scoring in favor of those who borrow money. It would be interesting to see what the score of someone who follows the Ramsey principals completely actually ls. Some of the FICO score elements are about stability (time at current address) as well as the number of lines of credit open and consistently paid. I suspect that a Ramsey student wouldn't have the best FICO score but won't have a bad one. Bad ones come from lots of mistakes.

We didn't know about Dave Ramsey when we started out and we never used the envelope system. We did come up with our own method that has worked for us. I don't think that the Ramsey methods are the only way to successfully manage personal finances but for those who have significant financial woes, Dave's approach may be easiest way to recovery. The best way to prevent the need for financial recovery would be to have the Ramsey method taught in schools. The liberal education establishment would never tolerate that, however. Having people who are financially independent would undermine their whole approach.

[jocat54]

Dave Ramsey has some good ideas, but it's not rocket science to get out of debt. We started working on getting out of debt long before Dave was around the airways, wasn't easy at the time but have been debt free for many years now. Even through my wifes cancer. Use common sense and that's all you really need to get debt free (well a job helps )

[SlickTX]

Does Ramsey still completely disregard the value of maintaining good credit? It seems that everything I have heard from him on the subject is that nobody needs to have credit. But we see that many things use your credit to judge you, such as potential employers, utility providers, and insurance companies.
I recognize that he has some great ideas, but it seems that he tends to overly "dumb it down." Considering his debt snowball, he encourages paying off the smallest debts first (even if they are not the debts with the highest interest rates) so you "feel" you've accomplished something. But the fastest way to pay off debt is to pay toward the highest-rate debt first to minimize the additional interest.
It's good that he makes things simple. But I dislike the idea of doing things inefficiently for the sake of simplicity.

I listen to Dave's radio show when I can catch it. I've also gone through the book and our family is completely debt free.

Dave has acknowledged many times on his show that his snowball method is not the most efficient from the numbers viewpoint. The beauty of his system is how he blends psychology into the equation. If people were logical and analytical they wouldn't have amassed uncontrollable debt in the first place. Dave understands that and offers a way out that builds on small sucesses. Dave also says that those that are analytical (and somehow just conveniently rational about their debts for the first time in a long time) are free to attack their debt in whatever order they prefer, so long as they stick to it.

[surprise_i'm_armed]

What Dave Ramsey does is admirable and needed by a lot of people who are in debt.
Living debt-free (except maybe your primary home's mortgage) is something for which to shoot.

But sometimes when I listen to his show, I want to slap some of his callers.
"Dave, our household income is $150,000 a year. We have $75,000 in the bank and $30,000 in credit card debt.
Should we pay off our credit cards?" Well - DUH.

How is it that people with sizable incomes need to run up credit card debt anyway?
They are smart enough to make a comfortable income, but they are too stupid to pay cash/debit card for their needs?

Also when I listen to some of these callers to Dave's show, the people's math doesn't add up to reality.
He had a young man call in to the show. Before he started to follow Dave's debt reduction program, he and his wife
had $103,000 in debt.

They paid it off in 3 years. Their combined household income was $52,000 a year.
Assume that they took home 67% of their pay after taxes/other deductions. Yearly take home = $34,840.

$38,340 x 3 years = $104,520 in take home pay.

So they paid off $103,000 in debt in 3 years, eh? That means they lived 3 years on ($104,520 - $103,000) or
$1,520. It must be nice to have a place to live, cars in which to drive to work/school, utilities, and food,
all for the grand total of $9.74 a week!!! The $9.74 figure is $1,520 divided by 156 weeks (3 years).

SIA

[chasfm11]

SIA,

I don't think that the callers to his show are any better than the callers to other shows. Many of them stretch the truth beyond reasonability.
When Ramsey can be a bit confrontational, he seems to stop short of calling people liars. Then again, we don't know all of the facts from any given situation. While I, too, scratch my head, I'd prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt about the actual numbers and applaud their overall approach.

I also agree that Ramsey's techniques are only "rocket science" to those who have seem to have driven themselves into financial disaster. That said, we have a family member who has done that more than once. She cried and cried, vowing she'd never do it again after the first crisis. It wasn't a couple of years later until she was in the exact same position again. She certainly has the intelligence to know better but didn't use it. Money, to some, is almost worse than drugs. If Dave Ramsey's approach can help them. all the better.

[Lambda Force]

So they paid off $103,000 in debt in 3 years, eh? That means they lived 3 years on ($104,520 - $103,000) or
$1,520. It must be nice to have a place to live, cars in which to drive to work/school, utilities, and food,
all for the grand total of $9.74 a week!!! The $9.74 figure is $1,520 divided by 156 weeks (3 years).

I alsways wondered about those stories. Unless they're using bankrupcy to cheat people, it's hard to believe the math.

[SlickTX]

So they paid off $103,000 in debt in 3 years, eh? That means they lived 3 years on ($104,520 - $103,000) or
$1,520. It must be nice to have a place to live, cars in which to drive to work/school, utilities, and food,
all for the grand total of $9.74 a week!!! The $9.74 figure is $1,520 divided by 156 weeks (3 years).

I alsways wondered about those stories. Unless they're using bankrupcy to cheat people, it's hard to believe the math.

The usual explanation is that those people sold a bunch of stuff. Like selling the $45,000 pickup to retire a $40,000 debt. When this is factored in, the numbers start to make more sense.