Act Your Wage

On here I talk about Dave Ramsey all the time. I know he's not the only financial advisor out there and I don't even try to claim that he's the best. I simply feel his program is the best fit for us. In the real world, I'm a little more reserved about my enthusiasm for FPU, especially around family. This is really hard because I'm very excited about what we are doing and the progress we are making, but I try to keep it under wraps.

This is partly because of what Dave calls the 'powdered butt syndrome' - some one who powdered your butt doesn't want financial advice from you. The other part is that I find it really hard to talk about the ins and outs of Dave's program with some one who doesn't want to hear it. Usually the people that don't want to hear it are people who aren't doing as well as they would like (or are fooled in to believing debt is normal). Just recently I was told that Dave is out of date and that his program would never work in this economy. Of course, the person who told me this is 1.) convinced it is true because she heard it from some one that listens to Dave and 2.) was probably just looking for an argument. I wasn't willing to take on that debate so I just bobbed my head and moved on - some thing Dave says you have to do from time to time.

In my head, however, I wanted to shout... YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! I'm not sure what aspect they could possibly be referring to. As I understand it, the biggest problem with our economy right now is the fact that people have over extended their credit and purchased more than they could possibly pay. Dave's program is the antithesis of this. He's anti-credit, don't buy it if you can't afford it, debt is bad, pay cash, act your wage mentality. I'm not really sure how that is in conflict with the current economic condition.

I did take a little bite of the carrot though and responded (with an extremely confused look on my face), "Do you mean on where you should invest?" The answer, "Yeah." Many of you will love my response to that, "Oh, well we're not to that step yet so I'm not worried about it." It's true. How many people are truely debt free and are worried about their investments right now? I'm not. The people that spurred this discussion aren't. The truth is that no one has a good solution for investing right now. The only thing I've heard - from almost every one, Dave, Suzzie, etc - is that you shouldn't be in the stock market unless you don't plan on touching the money for a good 5-10 years. Again, I just let it go... but I still wanted to scream.

The truth of the matter is that there is no program that will work for every one. Dave doesn't even have one set formula for every one. He has a general program that works for the majority of the people, but he will admit that it depends on your situation. I've heard him advise people to stop their snowball and stock-pile money. I've heard him tell some people they need to get off their butt and work 60-80 hours and others he has told that it doesn't make sense for the wife to work right now. Every one is different. Every one needs to find their own path. All I am saying is that you shouldn't try to throw up road blocks in my path just because you don't like the fact that I'm enjoying the ride.

Okay... rant over!