We are Dave fans, have read his books and listen to his radio broadcasts on the puter. We follow most of what he advises. I know that he speaks from experience and I like knowing that he's been there and done that. Sometimes when people call in he shoots down their business ideas before he hears what they have to say would be my only criticism.

Not exactly to a "T". I doubt he would have wanted us to get our house when we did. Now, though, we can see why, so I would have followed him in that as well, if I had known then what I know now.

I think the straigh shooting, "tell it like it is" is why we listen. He can be abrupt but he's really amazing when dealing with someone whose life has fallen apart. (like when women call in who have just lost their husbands, for instance).

I tell everyone I know about Dave Ramsey! :D

Karen I tell everyone too. We've even given his books away to friends after reading them. He is amazingly empathetic when someone calls in during a huge crisis. I surely will give him that. And I agree with what you say on that straight shooting style being the reason so many of us listen to him. I just sometimes think he jumps in with an abrupt answer before he's completely understood the question. I really like him and admire what he does though.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I guess that's one of the problems with a radio format. I mean, I don't think I'd be able to explain my life in sixty seconds. ;) And he can be abrupt, I agree. In my experience he's very gracious in person but still a little rushed, if you kwim...

However the ones that annoy me are the callers who have called in with what they think is the "one exception" to his "rules". Surely if you're calling his show you know what he thinks about things, right? I mean, no one agrees 100% with anyone but it IS his show. ;)

Mostly. Especially the 'steps' of the program.. We do have 2 CC that we do not use but haven't cut up and closed, partly haven't gotten around to it, partly letting them ride just because.. And I am still not doing well with the cash system. I resolve to try again this payday. I use a debit card for most things, but I think a cash system would really help. For example, today I went in to the grocery store for a few things and spent $56. Much needed things, sales, coupons, etc... but I couldn't remember how much was in my "virtual" budget in Quicken. Come home to put the numbers in and find I only had $35 left in "groceries". So I overspent my budget - which I can float money around to cover. But if I had a cash envelope system, I would have had to put back some things. Anyhow- yes mostly we are following Dave. If only I would have found this advice 10 years ago!! We would have never gotten this house when we did, we would have never have had so so many car payments over the years and many other stupid loans, etc. But better late than never!

I would have to say we follow 95% of his advice. We still have a credit card instead of a debit card, but only use it for DH's work gas.

Personally, I love his style. I think sometimes he can sound abrupt, but everyone has days like that. ;) I agree that he deals very well with people who are obviously going through a crisis ~ as long as they are willing to listen and showing signs of doing what they need to do to take care of themselves. I like hearing him tell the whiners to grow up.

I recently read a financial advice book by another guy and was just shaking my head through most of it. This guy promotes saving big-time for retirement, which is awesome, but he spent most of the book telling people to get a house even if they have no money, and then use home equity to keep buying more and more real estate without using any more cash than absolutely necessary. Arghhhhh! Talk about inviting Murphy to move in with you! I'll stick with Dave, thankyouverymuch. :D

I absolutely LOVE Dave Ramsey!

He has helped us so much! We have followed his advice nearly to a T. We cut up our credit cards in 2001 and haven't looked back. We paid off more than $60,000 in debt, and are debt-free except for our home. We even temporarily stopped contributing to our retirement accounts to get out of debt.

We now live only on my husband's income and have paid cash for our last 2 car purchases.

His advice really saved us and allowed us to do things that we wouldn't have been able to before. In 2004 I accepted a transfer with my company to another area... and DH ended up not being able to find a job! But luckily we were able to live off of my income, and since we have a fully funded ER Fund, we didn't worry.

Now we've moved again and I get to take some time off of work and be a homemaker! I just don't know where we would be if I hadn't found Dave!

Nichole

Oh, Nichole, you reminded me that we are still contributing to DH's pension ~ but only because it is union and we don't have any choice. :( Otherwise you can bet we would be using that $600/mo for snowballing! If we could have done that, we would be DONE with baby step 2 already!

I would say we follow 95% of what he says to do. I want so much to start paying extra on the mortgage or start contributing to retirement for me. But we are only on babystep #3. I am getting discouraged. I want so much to get ahead and dh keeps asking me why I don't want to follow his steps. I guess I just want to do it all right now! I love Dave though and listen almost every day.

Jennifer

Yeah, he can be abrupt. One of the things I love about his style is he can really sniff stuff out. It seems when someone really tries to 'sell' him onto their great idea sometimes they are hiding big debt and he catches them in it.

We follow about 95%. We haven't stopped dh's 401k because we get a company match up to 3%. And Dave would tell me to sell the car. I tried, didn't work, we're keeping and it's my first snowball. Other than that we follow it to a T.

I really like his style and how blunt he is. No sugar coating. And when he goes off on his ranting, yikes! It's hilarious! Like the other day he went off on how 43% of home buyers last year used 0% down. I think he ranted about 15 minutes. Made dh listen to it, we both got a big laugh at how blunt he was. Gotta say, I like listening to him. :)

I follow his advice pretty much to the T, except for I have kept my 401 (b) even though I still have to pay on my car. The reason I don't get rid of the 401 (b) is that I started late in life saving for retirement.

We didn't stop dh's 403b either when we started, another thing we didn't follow exactly. We did drop our whole life insurance and get term, same price (actually $7 lower a month) for 5x amount of coverage.

I too am a fan of Dave although he is a bit extreme for me.

I do follow his steps loosely and it was seeing him on Oprah that started me on this path to getting out of debt.

I'm working on building up my emergency fund, which was something that I never even thought of having before.

I am slowly transitioning to cash only, except for gasoline purchases which I will use my debit card for. (I am an impluse buyer so it's better for me to stay out of the gas station.)

I have begun to snow ball my payments and have two cards paid off since starting the program. One since I joined the board again. So it's starting to work and have another scheduled to be paid off this month.

I also started selling off all the stuff I had around the apartment that I bought on credit and haven't missed any of it. And gave up cable and the like and haven't missed them either.

And I am working on saving up enough to pay sales tax and such then I will trade my car in as it is a very high payment and worth a fair amount and then will buy a different car that hopefully I can afford. Although I will wind up with a car payment again, it will be much less. And I can not in good faith sell this lemon to another person at least at a dealership they may be able to fix all the stuff that is wrong with it.

Also with this coming July, I am moving back home with my parents. Not something I ever thought I would be doing but their money is tight and I am working on getting out of debt and saving up a down payment for a house so it benefits us both. Drastic times call for drastic measures.

Hearing him was definiately a turning point for me.

Now for a few questions for those that follow him to the t:

How to you reconcile the idea of giving up retirement savings? Especially for those of us that have a company match? My company for instance matches 100% of my contributions up to 5%. I did drop my contributions back to just the 5%, but giving up a 100% return is very difficult.

Also, did you stop building your emergency fund at $1000 then focus all money towards debt or did you continue to build it up? $1000 doesn't sound like very much money to me if I run into an emergency. That wouldn't even cover a month's worth of bills or a large car repair.

Those are the only two points that really cause me to be conflicted.

Well that and the saving up the emergency fund before I start paying down debt. But I have $1000 in savings , between the emergency fund and other savings already so it's a mute point.

Well, having $1000 in emergency savings is more than we ever had before. The fear of it NOT being enough for MANY problems is part of the motivation to get the debt paid off ASAP and get that fully funded emergency savings in place!

About the retirement, remember that it's TEMPORARY. As in, less than two years. If it's going to be longer, Dave recommends keeping up the retirement contributions. The reason he says to stop retirement contributions is so that you can become FULLY focused on getting rid of the debt and get it GONE as quickly as possible. Again, it's that fear thing. Wanting to get back to doing the retirement contributions (especially with a match!) will help you get things done that much faster.

Also, remember that this is a psychological way of getting rid of the debt. TOTAL focus and intensity. If you mire yourself in the math (worry about the retirement contribution or whether to pay off the higher-interest loan first, etc.), you will never completely get the motivation it takes to fully succeed with the program.

You've made some great progress! :D Keep it up! :D

Hi Traci,
A couple of things to think about with Dave's advice regarding the ER fund and retirement expenses.

First, if you have your beginner ER fund ($1000) and stop at that, you are able to begin to focus on getting out of debt fast. I see that you have credit cards and several of them are at really high interest rates. Just think of how much more effective paying that off is than having it in the savings account.

If you have an emergency in a particular month, you can pay the minimum on all of your bills instead of applying your snowball money to your smallest debt as well as use your EF Fund money if you need to.

On retirement, I also had a match, but decided to concentrate all of our efforts on getting out of debt quickly. The extra money really helped us.

By following all of Dave's advice, we were able to get completely out of debt in about 18 months. It was SO worth it! And now that we have a full ER fund ($15,000) in the bank, we're able to work on our retirement.

I just came to a point where I realized that what I had been doing was not working and decided to give his plan my best. I figured that he is doing so well, and must have a better plan than I do! Besides, if his plan doesn't work, I could always go back to what I was doing before.

Hope this helps! Just my perspective on things!

Nichole :)