About two and a half years ago, I was in the car with Josh one night (probably on our way back from eating xiao long bao in Rockville) when a deep voice with a southern twang came on the radio. Josh turned the volume up. "Have you heard this guy?" he asked. "You might like him."
The guy in question was Dave Ramsey, and the first thing I heard on his show was a caller asking, "How are you, Mr. Ramsey?" and Dave answering, "I'm better than I deserve." And I turned to Josh immediately and asked, "is this Christian talk radio?" And the answer was yes, it is a Christian talk radio show about personal finance. And you may be surprised to learn, Dear Reader, that I was hooked.
First, I think the Ramsey message is wonderful in its clarity: 1) don't go into debt and 2) pay off any debt you have as fast as you can. If you want to buy something, you need to save up for it and pay cash. (With the caveat that 15 year mortgages are acceptable.)
The advice is entirely pragmatic, merely with added bonus of being in line with scripture (or so Dave says). Furthermore, the Ramsey system is designed to work for everyone, no matter their location, salary, or education. Dave himself is intrinsically egalitarian and charmingly pro-free market; the people who call in to his show are earnest regular folks looking for advice about everyday money issues. I'm not the only one who has found this compelling; the show is syndicated on over 500 radio stations. (Though I guess these days that doesn't say much about your relative sanity. And I should note that a lot of people dislike Dave, too.)
The overarching argument is that if you get out of debt and stay out of debt, you will be free (and not just in the financial sense). This is the actual language he uses, too: people in debt are slaves, and people who have no debt are free. That message resonates with me, but it's incomplete. While I have no debt at the moment, and I'm very happy about it, I don't exactly feel free, either. I'm still, as Marx would say, a wage-slave. And while my white collar servitude is cushy, I will likely remain a wage-slave until I retire to my estate and live like the landed gentry of old (i.e., never).
Regardless, though, I keep listening to the show. And why I keep listening is somewhat mystifying to me. Dave's plan is very simple, and while I don't follow it to the letter, at this point I could recite the steps for you by rote. I guess I keep listening because the people who call in represent a fascinating range of American experience and they talk about money which, frustratingly, almost no one speaks about openly.
For example, just the other day I was listening and a woman called in. She is 24 years old and her husband is 25 and they have a five month old baby. They both work on the family ranch. Her question was about how much life insurance to buy. I knew the answer to the question already, but the very nature of this person is fascinating to me. I doubt that I will ever in my life meet a 24-year-old ranch hand with a husband and a baby. And then you have the guy who works on an off-shore oil rig and wants to know if he should take a job that pays him a third of what he makes now but lets him see his kids more than once every six months. Who is that guy? I will also probably never meet someone like him, and even if I did he probably wouldn't want to talk to me, much less tell me about his job conundrum.
If nothing else, Dave's show has given me some small insight into my fellow Americans, who, I'm sad to admit, often seem very foreign to me.
The guy in question was Dave Ramsey, and the first thing I heard on his show was a caller asking, "How are you, Mr. Ramsey?" and Dave answering, "I'm better than I deserve." And I turned to Josh immediately and asked, "is this Christian talk radio?" And the answer was yes, it is a Christian talk radio show about personal finance. And you may be surprised to learn, Dear Reader, that I was hooked.
First, I think the Ramsey message is wonderful in its clarity: 1) don't go into debt and 2) pay off any debt you have as fast as you can. If you want to buy something, you need to save up for it and pay cash. (With the caveat that 15 year mortgages are acceptable.)
The advice is entirely pragmatic, merely with added bonus of being in line with scripture (or so Dave says). Furthermore, the Ramsey system is designed to work for everyone, no matter their location, salary, or education. Dave himself is intrinsically egalitarian and charmingly pro-free market; the people who call in to his show are earnest regular folks looking for advice about everyday money issues. I'm not the only one who has found this compelling; the show is syndicated on over 500 radio stations. (Though I guess these days that doesn't say much about your relative sanity. And I should note that a lot of people dislike Dave, too.)
The overarching argument is that if you get out of debt and stay out of debt, you will be free (and not just in the financial sense). This is the actual language he uses, too: people in debt are slaves, and people who have no debt are free. That message resonates with me, but it's incomplete. While I have no debt at the moment, and I'm very happy about it, I don't exactly feel free, either. I'm still, as Marx would say, a wage-slave. And while my white collar servitude is cushy, I will likely remain a wage-slave until I retire to my estate and live like the landed gentry of old (i.e., never).
Regardless, though, I keep listening to the show. And why I keep listening is somewhat mystifying to me. Dave's plan is very simple, and while I don't follow it to the letter, at this point I could recite the steps for you by rote. I guess I keep listening because the people who call in represent a fascinating range of American experience and they talk about money which, frustratingly, almost no one speaks about openly.
For example, just the other day I was listening and a woman called in. She is 24 years old and her husband is 25 and they have a five month old baby. They both work on the family ranch. Her question was about how much life insurance to buy. I knew the answer to the question already, but the very nature of this person is fascinating to me. I doubt that I will ever in my life meet a 24-year-old ranch hand with a husband and a baby. And then you have the guy who works on an off-shore oil rig and wants to know if he should take a job that pays him a third of what he makes now but lets him see his kids more than once every six months. Who is that guy? I will also probably never meet someone like him, and even if I did he probably wouldn't want to talk to me, much less tell me about his job conundrum.
If nothing else, Dave's show has given me some small insight into my fellow Americans, who, I'm sad to admit, often seem very foreign to me.
