Had it not been for our early encounters with the Debt Monster, I don’t know if or when we would have started budgeting. One other point, and this might be slightly controversial - I think our student loan debt was a good thing. So while we disagree that college needs to be paid for upfront, we strongly advocate against approaching college finances recklessly. On the flip side, Johnny and I made sure to not increase our debt by holding jobs, graduating in four years, applying and qualifying for scholarships and grants, and choosing a school with well below average tuition costs. The income opportunity that we gained by attending college (instead of waiting until we could pay for it in full) was worth every cent of debt we incurred. Or we’d have gotten into them years and years later. But we also would have had a much different college experience, one that might not have included our majors and accompanying post-grad careers and salaries. Sure, we wouldn’t have ever been $20k in the hole with the Student Loan Debt Monster if we’d followed his advice. We don’t agree with most debt, but appropriate student loans in modest amounts is permissible debt in our eyes. For a number of reasons, we’re just not on board with this one. He argues that there are always cheaper schools, jobs available to concurrently pay for tuition, and bounteous scholarship options. Dave Ramsey doesn’t think it’s worth it to go into debt for higher education. Okay, so we were never on board with this rule. If we stick to our budget, it shouldn’t matter whether it’s with cash or any other form of payment.Īlso, cash is really dirty - like 90%-of-all-bills-are-covered-in-cocaine dirty. As far as the psychological aspect of using cash, we’d much rather learn to rely on our itemized budget than always leaning on a crutch. And while it was a good way to buckle down and get serious about budgeting those first few months, it was extremely inconvenient long term. We tried this method for a couple of months. One thing’s for sure - it certainly makes it much more difficult to spend cash in today’s day and age (unless you live in cash-only NYC), but I don’t think this was his point. His belief is that, psychologically, people spend less money when they use cash. And it’s not just because he hates credit cards. Using the Envelope System and Cash Onlyĭave is a big proponent of using cash for everything. The longer we budget, the more we believe this. So while we once were lost and Dave Ramsey helped us see (this is getting entirely too religious and idol-worshippy), here are a few of his rules that we’ve since officially graduated from, never to look back. Everyone’s set of financial rules is going to and should be different. With time, we learned that the “personal” aspect of personal finance was really really important. If there was only one right way of doing things, it’d just be called “finance.” But the truth is, there’s a reason it’s called personal finance. Heck, we weren’t going to argue with the guy that was helping us pay off our debt. When reading Dave Ramsey, he made everything he preached sound as essential as his last piece of advice, like there was only one path to financial success. These are just some of the financial commandments. Learn to control your money or your money will control you. Some rules, if not followed, can and will make or break your finances. While certain basic financial rules are absolutely essential to success, others aren’t. Maybe it wasn’t Dave Ramsey, but rather a different financial guru who helped get you on the path to financial independence.īut after we started to finally get the hang of this whole budgeting thing, we started to realize something. We were drinking the Ramsey Kool-aid and we wanted everyone to know about it. We listened in awe to countless once-indebted couples who shared their stories and let out Debt Free Screams on his radio show. We adopted “gazelle intensity” as a normal phrase in our household. A friend lent us The Total Money Makeover one fateful day, and our financial lives were changed forever. Joanna and I will forever owe our budgeting beginnings to the man, the myth, the legend, Mr.
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