I like your estimate.

Those people for who mindlessly following the advice of a particular guru might be beneficial can't tell which guri they should follow and end up following the advice of the best salesman which is rarely beneficial to anyone but the salesman.

It's getting in to the top schools that's more competitive than ever before. Once you're there, it's basically just like everywhere else, only the grading is actually way more lenient because you were one of the 5% they decided to let in so they can't go giving you bad grades. Basically everyone who gets in graduates with "Honors".

I'm 100% with you on the first part, but I don't agree that the advice is rarely beneficial (i.e. even though most of the clueless Ramsey followers aren't able to make an optimal decision in which guru they follow, they do still receive benefit from blindly following his plan).

Sure they can get lucky and accidently follow a beneficial plan.

but they need to get very lucky, may as well stick it all on red.

Graduating with honors is much easier than getting in. I'm not sure what your point is though. Many people at top schools have ambitions for their undergrad career that are far beyond getting good grades.

I'm not sure a complete review of Ramsey's plan would neccasarily be branded and blatantly obvious. (to a 2+2er it is because i've learned we are all geniuses) If you look purely at the "live on next to nothing and spend all your money on bills/no debt" part its pretty basic. But a lot of that is for the people that are 30K-60K in consumer debt or have a mortgage they are unable to live with. These folks obviously made some poor choices and need a basic reworking of their financial philosophy.

The plan goes into quite a bit more after this though and details some information thats less obvious.

1.)The idea of being completely debt free is actually not obvious. I.E. the people in this very thread disputing paying off a mortgage. I won't vote who's right but if a bunch of financial wizards are argueing over it, it must not be obvious.

2.) Having an emergancy fund and also 3-6 months of living expense could be argued as obvious but is likely not followed by 90% of people so is good to throw in there. He also details what qualifys as an emergancy and how to decide what end of the 3-6month spectrum you should use based on life circumstances.

3.) He also explains a number of poor consumer choices such as car leases and i think it is term life insurance that he hates. He then explains, for people already in these deals, how to calculate whether to cancel or finish the contract of such deals.

I'm probably coming off as a little too bullish on Dave as im not some guy that runs round preaching about him. But whatever i read his book and found it pretty solid. It is probably elementary to people that can pick up new degrees every 8 months but hell they probably slept through nuclear physics and still aced the class.

fair enough...i can agree that there's a lot of "advice" out there that's either designed to take advantage of people or is flat out wrong.

i do think there's also a lot of well-intentioned, but extremely simplistic advice out there (like Ramsey's) that really is beneficical for a majority of people though.

But thankfully for both groups, there is a more than large enough pool of dummies out there to keep lots of gurus busy.

It is actually term life that Ramsey endorses and it is Universal/Whole Life that he calls a "ripoff." I've always carried term because it is the most bang for the buck when I need it which is early in life. Later in life, I'll have built wealth and, with no debts to payoff, won't need much if any for the family.

My bottom line with Ramsey is this: how can you argue that having no consumer debt, no mortgage debt, 6-months worth of expenses in cash in the bank and 15% of your gross income going into retirement is a bad thing?

He has a hard core methodology of getting there because most people need that. The people that call his show are not Harvard Business grads. They're oftentimes blue-collar, high-school educated folks as far as I can tell. That said, I am amazed at the number of families earning $100K+ a year that are tens of thousands of $$s in debt.

I like his financial message but he needs to lose the religious talk. I don't care about what the scriptures say about finance.

Agreed, that does probably turn alot of people off and perhaps even de-legitimizes his message with some. I respect his faith and his belief that, for example, the giving component somehow comes back many times over. That said, I am implementing the plan without tithing (I'm not a regular church-goer). I do look forward to becoming debt-free and giving money to charities I feel do good work just because it makes me feel good. Not because I think that I owe it to society or that my "good fortune" of becoming debt-free is a result of something other than my own good diligence.

He hammers that point home in "Total Money Makeover". He prefers to use "Live like no one else so later you can live like no one else". But the "stop being an overspending little bitch" is pretty much his #1 point.

I have the original Financial Peace and you can really see how his plan evolved as time went on.

I'm not religious, but I treat the bible verses like reading "The Richest Man In Babylon"...wisdom that came long before my time. Ramsey's an unapologetic Christian. Sometimes it gets annoying (like when he won't answer a good question because he gets sidetracked on someone's lifestyle choice that he doesn't agree with), but that's who he is.

Can you give some examples of who it would not be useful for?

His mutual fund advice in the book I have is terrible for 100% of people.

His car buying advice will not result in the lowest price possible for virtually anyone.

His debt advice is inferior for anyone with self-control who can make +EG decisions without feeling a dumb compulsion to spend every dollar they have access to.

The list goes on.

I always wondered about his 25/25/25/25 plan (Total Money Makeover). And his general panic when people tell him they own a single stock is kind of funny. Of course I wonder about other people's ideas (like the folks who tell me I should have 75% of my investments in Canada just because I live here).

Based on the writings in financial planning section of the bookstore, it seems the compulsion to spend every penny is perceived to be the biggest problem that we have.
The Automatic Millionaire...put it away automatically before you can spend it
The Wealthy Barber...save 10% off the top and max out your retirement, then do whatever you want
The Richest Man In Babylon...a man will be wealthy if he puts aside 10% of all that he earns.
Suze Orman...no one can afford to buy anything. You're going to die if you don't have six months of expenses in savings.

Ugh, same here. Every word is true.

I've taken the same "Speech" class 3 times. Different names, but they were all required. The exams were the same exact concepts... yet people still didn't know wtf they were doing. In every class there were at least a handful of morons. Professor: "This is an informative speech, don't choose anything controversial. Your essay shouldn't include the word 'should.' Don't do politics, religion, or gay marriage because you most likely suck at will do persuasive." First student up has a power point slide that features two male figurines on a wedding cake. Of course he goes on why everyone in the class should be against gay marriage with just awful points. One was "If you are 80 and fall down the stairs and break your hip, is your gay partner going to help you? No, that's why you need a heterosexual partner."

Third speech class... and for the 3rd time the professor tells us not to pass things around class or begin the speech with a ******ed question. 90% of the class does both. SJDKFSJDLFSJDFKL.

All of the finance classes have been the same so far and there's still people who don't understand the time value of money. We had one professor who gave us 100 questions a week before the exam WITH THE ANSWERS, 50 of which would be on the exam. You even got to bring a full page of notes. Can you put 2 and 2 together? Because there were still people getting D's on the test!

I finished my group's final project on my own because this is what my group produced:

"US are at the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and with economy being at its worst; it has caused a downfall on sub-prime mortgage and credit."

"Similar to credit crisis, the US economy fail in sub-prime mortgage."

"This has caused oil prices to skyrocket, which intern causes transportation companies to pay higher for gas and oil charging which means that they have to charge more to suppliers who need deliveries which cause consumers to have to pay more, thus we have inflation."

SDFJKSDJ. All from different people. People that will graduate.

/off-topic rant

Do you really think close to 100% of people would benefit from reading his book or whatever?

In a country (continent?) where we are taught nothing about day-to-day money handling while we're in public school? Yes I do. That said, a lot of other books would be just as good.

I guess I agree with you in spirit, a ton of people need to hear this and need to implement a system that is fool proof. I guess I was surprised that you couldn't think of cases where his advice wouldn't be needed, like very wealthy people that have different financial goals or people that already carry no debt. I don't think we really disagree on the main point.

It wasn't that I can't think of any...I just wanted the poster who said "80%" to throw a few out.

I think Ramsey is great, for the same reason I like Dr. Phil. Straight-forward "you caused your own problems, you have to fix them" advice. I don't buy 100% into his Baby Steps, but I am debt-free with money in the bank and it is SOOOOOOO worth it.

80% may very well be low.

Yeah, I'm actively culling people from my life who fall in this group.... I probably have a heavily biased sample.

Ya, 80% seems really high to me but a ton of people don't have college degrees and honestly cannot afford something like eating out multiple times a week. I'm also biased since i only make 20k now and I can afford eating out pretty much as I please, but it is correct for me to save 0% of my income while that isn't the case for most.

Thremp already answered more completely than I would have, but basically the bolded part is what I was considering to be the main point when I threw out that number. His advice regarding paying off mortgages in particular is not optimal for those that invest wisely. I think we can agree that all debt is not bad if one uses it effectively.

I also was including people that may follow his principles but have already acquired the same knowledge on their own. I don't consider his ideas to be useful for those people.

Just to be clear though, I'm not knocking Ramsey. I think he provides a needed service for a lot of people.