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Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 4:35 pm
by Dream of Freedom
My brother reads Ramsey. I don't know how he stands it. I would rather read Thoreau or Fisker or even quasi-charletains like Jim Cramer or Robert kiyosaki.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 4:38 pm
by IlliniDave
Nomad wrote:
Thu May 16, 2019 3:59 pm
@IlliniDave
Apologies, I was doing it from memory. :)

@Jason
I agree, Dave R. has his place for those in debt, but his investment advice isn't great.
No worries, you weren't far off. I echo the sentiment about his investing advice (think I may have commented above to that effect). Better than not investing at all, but he comes from the commission-based advisor world (which can be fine for people who don't want to do it themselves), but his investing advice is mostly a pep talk without much nuance, and none of the nuance relevant to FIRE. There are many better options out there IMHO.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 9:17 am
by Jason
I have read Ramsey. He told me to act like a gazelle. I really didn't know what a gazelle was so I looked it up and to my surprise its a type of antelope. I always thought it was a bird. Not that I really thought about it much anyways being that I'm not an animal type of guy. But no matter what it is, I'm not gazelle material. And I just figured Ramsey is a talker, not a writer. I mean who inspires people by telling them to act like a fucking antelope. That being said, I'm Ok with Ramsey. But if hell is other people, I can only imagine the place that is Tony Robbins. I had a roommate who would sit around all day smoking pot and watching his videos. I couldn't figure out who was more full of shit.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 9:29 am
by Frita
@unemployable
Update: The statements are issued based on current years of service and the payout at 60 years old if one stopped working immediately. Now that they have an online calculator (and if one actually plays with it), one gets a clearer picture.

@Jason
What does it mean to be a gazelle in Dave Ramsey-speak? I see a lot of antelope dead along side of the road. Should one aspire to be road pizza? (It reminds me of an interview I went to and was asked what kind of tree I’d be. After a beat, I replied that I was more of a dandelion and couldn’t identify with any trees.)

Tony Robbins scores high on my BS meter too.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 10:05 am
by Jason
If someone asked me what type of tree I'd be, I'd say the one that you take a family photo under so I can drop a branch and crush the skulls of every one you fucking love the second after you say "Say Cheese."

Dave was trying to convey that when contemplating debt reduction, one should be constantly moving, swift of foot, light on their feet and fast. Focused but light. Like a Gazelle, that supposedly can run at speeds of 80MPH. I imagine Dave was on some type of safari where he was enjoying himself on all the money he makes off of people's financial stupidity and spotting a bunch of gazelle's being chased by a cheetah and thinking "That's the perfectly analogy for debt reduction" and immediately calling his publisher to inform them that he had enough changes to get the 105th edition of "Complete Money Makeover" going.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 4:18 pm
by IlliniDave
Ramsey's backstory is that he made himself into an on-paper multimillionaire in his 20s using real estate and a lot of leverage. Still in his 20s his house of cards crumbled and he went bankrupt with a young family, and recounts one of the more profound lows being having their power shut off in the winter because he could not pay the bill. The "gazelle-like intensity" he coaches refers to constant attention/vigil when it comes to managing money the way a herd of gazelle is constantly on high alert for approaching predators. Kind of a tortured analogy, but his core audience is people who have historically been walking financial disasters and are beginning the process of slogging their way out without already having established good financial habits.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 6:06 pm
by Laura Ingalls
@7w5
My parents bought some land about 30 years ago. The house was completely self built and the place has passively earned income from rented ag land and is perfectly sited for passive solar plus woodstove and woods to harvest wood. They always had a big garden. It was a great setup for a long time. Roy Roy would be proud.

It presently stinks. My mom remains in very robust health for her age. But she can’t garden to save her ass. She doesn’t know how to run a chainsaw. She has no clue how her wood furnace works despite my DH explaining it to her multiple times. Her driving skills are deteriorating and she lives 8 miles from anything.

Permaculture, long term RVing and other “alternative lifestyles “ are all more active lives. Heck, even cooking from scratch all get harder with aging.

I would like my mom to figure out an alternative arrangement but in truth known she won’t do anything til painted in a corner. I am sure not encouraging selling as she has a tax bomb due to her low cost basis and the fact that she can’t call it her primary residence because of the ag land. Anyway permaculture ain’t permanent

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Sat May 18, 2019 6:54 am
by Jason
Speaking of Tony Robbins.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/to ... s-n1007041

Dave Ramsey also has one foot in the evangelical community. He is a self-professing Christian who claims to tithe 20% of his income and his materials are part of the core curriculum in many church's personal finance classes. The folksy, plain spoken-tough love exhibited in his pod-casts morphs into a semi-preaching, Christian call for Biblical financial responsibility when he speaks from a pulpit.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Sat May 18, 2019 9:49 am
by C40
Ramsey's advice is actually not far off from an extremely dumbed-down practical 'step-by-step' ERE guide - that is, up until he tells people to let off the gas once they get debt free.

I read a book or two of his and listened to some stuff and appreciated his advice, but was then surprised and sort of confounded by his assumption that everyone should settle in and work until they're 60. Even with the "work forever assumption", his advice should be for people to continue their 'gazelle intensity' for another 5-10 years after becoming debt-free, because then their investment income would be a significant addition to their work income for the rest of their life and they could "live like no-one else" (as he likes to say) starting much younger than 65.

His Christian preachy stuff is annoying but he does a nice job of compartmentalizing it and only bringing it up at the very end of his books or talks.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Sat May 18, 2019 12:52 pm
by C40
We're all animals and perverts. It's just a matter of how well we control our desires and actions.

It does seem crazy to learn how many successful people are so poor at controlling themselves. Maybe it just seems like a lot because it's only the 'bad ones' in the news (?)

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Sun May 19, 2019 1:42 pm
by 7Wannabe5
Laura Ingalls wrote:Anyway permaculture ain’t permanent
Some have suggested that the term "permanent" in permaculture is as iffy as the term "retirement" in ERE. "Perpetual" might be a better term. Also, self-sufficient homesteading and permaculture, although frequently overlapping in practice, are not the same thing.

Anyways, if your parents as a team made a successful 30 year run of it, that's about par with a 4% withdrawal rate on invested funds, so pretty damn good. If their systems design had been completely in accord with the principles of permaculture, there should have been several alternatives on several different levels that would have prevented endgame of "Mom can't work chainsaw or wood stove." I mean, an aging human is no different than an aging cherry tree at the level of any functions besides intelligent design. IOW, this anecdote does not serve as evidence of inherent flaw in perma-culture design principles, although it does illustrate potential downside of rural lifestyle for solo aging human.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Sun May 19, 2019 3:25 pm
by Jason
When it came out that John Denver beat the crap out of Annie and then took a chain saw to their bed, I lost the ability to be surprised by celebrity behavior. I mean the guy sang with the Muppets. You can't be pulling that kind of shit and then sing with the fucking Muppets. That's crossing the line.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Sun May 19, 2019 3:33 pm
by unemployable
Jason wrote:
Sun May 19, 2019 3:25 pm
John [Deutschendorf]
Well his signature song was about moving to the Colorado mountains and complaining about how crowded it was getting. While changing his name to a city that actually isn't the in mountains at all. So he never represented any sort of model to me, his music being burned into my head from the 8-track of his greatest hits my parents played endlessly while hauling me around in their 1973 Ford Pinto notwithstanding.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Mon May 20, 2019 8:31 am
by Jason
Even taking into account the image vs. reality disparity, he just never seemed like a taking a chain saw to the bed type of guy to me. Usually there's some clues in the music or in behavior. Kurt Cobain killing himself, Axl Rose making girls pee in a litter box, Rick James free basing off of a groupie, Led Zeppelin sticking a shark up a girl's hoo ha, Elvis dying on the can, Steve Tyler adopting a girl so he can sleep with her. Those are things I would say "Yeah, that makes sense." But that moppy haired, spectacle, tree hugging motherfucker, strangling the girl eponymously named in a hit song and then firing up a chain saw and slicing their bed in half? I don't know. That was hard to align for me.

And Tony Robbins wasn't that surprising to me. I mean he's an ego maniac suffering from gigantism. It's kind of to be expected. I would be upset if allegations came out against Dave Ramsey. So Dave, if you are reading this, please, keep it in your pants, big guy. We need you.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Mon May 20, 2019 7:05 pm
by Nomad
Jason wrote:
Mon May 20, 2019 8:31 am
Kurt Cobain killing himself...
This probably derails the thread completely, but I don't think he did.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 6:49 am
by Jason
How about we just delete that reference and replace it with "Rolling Stones inserted Mars bar in Marianne Faithful" in order to keep thread on track.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 10:20 am
by jennypenny
Nomad wrote:
Mon May 20, 2019 7:05 pm
This probably derails the thread completely, but I don't think he did.
Another fan of Soaked in Bleach, I see.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 11:34 am
by Jason
We are currently watching "Montage of Heck" and we had to stop during the Courtney/Cobain holed up in an apartment heroin footage. It was very disturbing.

As a personal anecdote, I worked for Geffen's parent company back in the 90's. I remember the day when it was reported that he overdosed in Europe. Everyone was waiting for the outcome. He lived through that one but it was later reported it was a suicide attempt. I think it was the same day that Kid of Kid n' Play found me asleep in my office which had the Pac Man machine and woke me up asking if he could play a game. He was very polite for a rapper although Play said who cares about the skinny ass sleeping on the job white boy.

Montage of Heck also depicts how as a teenager Cobain laid down on the train tracks with cinder blocks only to have the train run over another track. If he didn't kill himself, it certainly seemed as though he didn't mind being dead.

But in order not to permanently derail the thread, it does makes one think "If only he had called Dave Ramsey, who knows, he might still be with us."

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 7:02 pm
by Frita
@Jason
I think Kurt Cobain would not have been moved by Dave Ramsey. Some people just don’t give two fucks about much. KC was totally in that category.

Re: Today’s Dave Ramsey article in newspaper?

Posted: Tue May 21, 2019 9:31 pm
by intellectualpersuit
I wouldn't say the Gazelle gives off the best first impression, do you want to be a herd animal? Not that it matters. I'm a "Beetle man" from 1984.