>Dave Ramsey down-talks to his callers as if they were petulant children and tells you to cut up your credit cards. Dave says they are the work of the devil and you aren’t mature enough to use them. Except we used our cards to make $3,624 in spendable cash last year, all while paying zero in interest — because we paid the cards off in full each month.
The big thing you have to know about Dave Ramsey is he has a biblical approach to debt, not practical. God says debt is bad so it should be avoided.
This leads to some odd advice.
Dave advocates working as much as possible during college to avoid student loans but neglects that, in the aggregate, the more hours a student works the poorer their grades and the less likely they will graduate.
He also advocates stopping 401k contributions until you're out of debt (because he believes debt is evil). That's almost never a great move financially if your employer has a decent 401k match. A better idea is to drop anything above the match until high interest debt is paid off.
His advice is very one sized fits all and he does have a point that many people can't control themselves with debt.
I'm really not a fan of the way he talks to his callers calling them stupid either, especially when he doesn't realize he doesn't really understand his caller's situation. He got super belligerent with a woman who didn't know exactly her husband's pay (who was a servicemember) and basically said she needed a marriage counselor because she didn't have an exact figure. (She said "around $xyz") But it seems he doesn't understand a significant portion comes in the form of several different allowances that are tax free and change based on their current orders, POC, and rank, so it's totally normal to have a non-precise figure off the ttopof your head.