Finance guru Dave Ramsey slams 'awful' Gen Zers and millennials who live with their parents: 'They suck. They can't buy a house because they don't work'
We really need to start eating the parasites that talk like this. This fucking shit stain has never worked a day in it's pathetic little life.
Ramsey was born in Antioch, Tennessee, to real estate developers.[2] He attended Antioch High School where he played ice hockey. At age 18, Ramsey took the real estate exam[2] and began selling property, working through college at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville,[2] where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance and Real Estate.[3]
Daddy gave him all he's got and yet it's my fault my dad was a poor artist and died young?
However, the upheaval millennials and Gen Z have faced may soon be behind them. The former is expected to become the “richest generation in history,” courtesy of a $90 trillion great wealth transfer in the coming decades, while younger consumers generally say they’re feeling more optimistic about their financial futures.
Don't worry, eventually your parents will die and you'll be able to live in the whole house not just the basement.
Also the the boomers with any wealth are going to live a lot longer. My boomer mom’s mom was 91 when she died, the only reason my mom is solvent is because she inherited and sold grandma’s house.
If my mom lives that long I’ll be in my mid 60s and my brother in his 50s. I’m a late Gen Xer btw.
This is what neoliberalism and capitalism wants the younger generations to believe, but a large percentage of that wealth will be stolen via health care and similar predatory, exploitative systems.
They cannot arrest or kill the entire working class, pitchforks or not. I mean, they could, but then who would work for them and make them richer? They need us and it's going to be a very painful reminder when we remind them, one way or another.
I've been sick of him from the first moment I met an adherent. I mentioned how I like to avoid debt and pay it down early and the person said "Oh, so you listen to Dave Ramsey?" I confessed to having no idea who they were talking about, and they swore that I was being obtuse because I couldn't have come up with "interest sucks" on my own.
Dave Ramsey can fuck himself. This is the same idiot that says you should give 10% of your money as tithe so that an invisible sky daddy doesn't send you to hell to burn for eternity.
I've always made good money, and got some good advice when I started my first job to just always put aside 10% for saving, and put that into ira/401k. I'm in my 40s now and a millionaire. I still have to work and will until retirement age.
I know I'm lucky, but you're really barking up the wrong tree if you think simply having a million dollars makes you bad person. I'm just a saver.
These days, I don't bat an eye at a seven figure or even low-mid eight figure millionaire. That level of wealth is attainable through individual means (hard work, saving, diligent investing, etc) and probably a significant amount of luck. It's once you start getting into the mid to upper 8-9 figure and then billionaires where there is no way they achieved that wealth without exploitation and all the other accompanying things these people perpetrate.
Saving what, exactly? The problem is that people arent able to maintain a standard of living, meaning they can't certainly can't save.
Or in simpler terms, things are becoming so expensive that they are forced to decrease their standard of living to meet their needs. This isn't a personal finance issue.
No thanks? Why would i be miserable right now and happy long after I'm no longer able to enjoy life? Unless you think we're on the cusp of curing aging or something.
This is a really cute concept. Many people don't have an extra $5 a day. Do you know what you get when you invest $5 a day over 12 years at a 4% interest rate? It's not a million dollars.
And then not be eligible for government insurance because you have too much money and go bankrupt paying for medication. Plus the million other little cuts and stabs you will take. Your kids had to go to higher ed and if you don't help them they can't. Someone tripped on your property and sued you.
What I have learned is this: invest in what can't be taken away by a financial group or their judicial lackseys. Your skillset, property that has complex financial structure, your tools, your family, your reputation.
Your bank doesn't want you custom laptop but you with your knowledge have income with it. Your insurance company doesn't want your house that has crazy agreements about who owns it that would take a generation of lawyers to sort out. Your government doesn't want your brother-in-law who lives abroad and runs a farm you helped buy. The guy suing you doesn't want your professional network. What those parasites want is money without effort. So only own the stuff that requires effort to use.
He knows this. I used to listen to his show. And in all my time listening to him, he never took on a caller who was making nine bucks an hour and struggling to make ends meet. His most frequent type of caller is a straight late twenties couple who make $140k a year, who owe maybe $25k in credit cards, and whose obvious answer to fixing the problem is to sell the thousand dollar car payment for something more basic and eat out less often. Because he knows if minimum wage workers get past the screeners, there's nothing he can do to help. That's a systemic problem and he knows he's part of it. What's he gonna tell them? Go get a better job? Cool. If everyone does that, there won't be any of those jobs for 90% of them, one, and two, there won't be anyone working those important low wage jobs. Someone's gotta flip the burgers. Someone's gotta stock the shelves. The problem is systemic. And the answer is fuck the rich.
It's not that I've been dealt a losing hand, it's that my generation wasn't dealt a hand at all, and were cussed out when we asked why the dealer left us out.... Then they told us we lost the game because we were too lazy to buy our own cards to use, even though that's not how Poker works.
I lost all respect for Ramsey when I came across a video of him saying he wouldn't take a 0% interest million dollar loan. His opinions on finance are outrageous and dumb.
Yea. I have managed to never carried debt. Without that, what’s this guy got to offer me? In fact, the only thing the guy has to offer is the simplest financial advice there is: spend less than you earn.
But then a poor person comes along and says they can’t and his only advice is ‘earn more money’. Because it’s that easy, obv.
The guy is an out of touch chode who had some privileged upper middle class kid think he was the financial messiah once for saying ‘use a budget’ and let that go to his head.
Not having debt would have been nice, but it’s kind hard when your parents shove you out the door at 17. I worked full time through college, shared an apartment with three other people, and ended up 50k to get a degree in a field that I can no longer work in (my state is currently covering up the murder of a transgender child, and as a fat hairy bearded man, I am legally required to piss in a stall next to teenage girls).
His advice works if you’re an upper middle class person with a supportive family. You can’t budget if you are making 12k a year.
I'm pragmatic to a fault and so his advice often makes me cringe.
However, I still have respect for him.
First and foremost because he was the gateway for my wife actually caring about our finances. And so her realizing that we can make a lot more money in the long run by not recklessly spending it now I have to credit him for...I couldn't get through to her, but now she comes to me for most all financial advice.
However it's also because for a lot of people their relationship with money is more emotional than it is rational, and for them he is very good. Watching my wife go through the transformation gave me an appreciation for what he preaches, even if it isn't logically the best path, it's often the best path for a lot of people.
What is so bad about living with your parents? That's still the norm in many parts of the world. For some reason western countries, and especially America, have exaggerated the benefits of being financially independent, as if shared resources were some kind of failure.
I beg to differ. The only people who lose when we share resources are the capitalists.
I've got a few friends in their thirties who live with their parents and the whole family is very happy. And although my kids are only six and three, I can't imagine any reason why I wouldn't want them to continue living in my house for as long as they needed support.
We all need support. It's not a shame. It's an asset more valuable than property, imho.
you might be gay and have to move out, assuming they didn't throw you out as a teen. even if you're straight your parent's won't respect you as an adult if you live with them and impose restrictions on your lifestyle. you also have to appease them in whatever crazy shit they force on you because they can kuck you out if you refuse
I'm a gen x, and I don't want to work. I mean really, who does? Who would rather work than spend time with their family and/or see the world? I work because I have to to survive.
"want to work"? that's only for actual humans, you are a parasite leaching off the work of the people who are actually productive, the shareholders, and if they all go hide in a secret valley gated community the world will collapse as they invent a perpetomobile outside the "laws of nature" imposed by the government
(everything up to the perpetomobile is actually held beliefs among these people, just the laws of nature being enforced by the government is a bit of a gag)
I love working! ... when I'm self-employed. Knowing that what I'm doing is likely to actually make a difference for someone other than a rich fuck is incredibly motivating.
Dave Ramsey is one of those guys where you have to eat the fish but leave the bones.
A lot of what he teaches is really great, practical advice--aimed at people who really might not understand financial basics.
Things like budgeting, saving, investing in mutual funds, and avoiding debt like the plague. That's all fantastic financial advice. The whole "borrower is servant to the lender stuff pulled right out of the Bible is stuff that most on here would agree with. Debt is a way to force people into financial serfdom.
But occasionally he says stupid shit like this. And maybe it's taken out of context, but probably not. He always has advocated busting your ass to get out of debt and start saving. He calls it getting "gazelle" intense about it(basically saying banks, lenders, etc are lions trying to kill you). Again, not too far off from whatost people agree with.
So, he's advocated getting multiple jobs if you need to until you can right your financial ship.
But he's also an proponent of advocating for yourself and getting better jobs and ditching the second job as soon as you can. So I dunno. He says dumb stuff but he's also pretty practical overall. Like I said eat the fish, leave the bones.
His "no debt" spiel is a decade out of date. The red queen paradox applies here, most people need to run as fast as they can, just to stay in the same place.
The average house here has gone up in value 55 euros a day for the past decade, and rent has risen faster Unless you're already doing very well, you cant budget your way into buying a house anymore. Saving 55 euros a day for a decade means you're standing still, you need to MORE to actually get closer to buying property.
Again, that's 55 bucks a DAY, or 1650 a month, just keep pace. Dave Ramsey can fuck right off when it takes 32 hours at minimum just to stay as poor as you always were.
The second job thing is interesting, it's like he doesn't understand that the economic situation of a society as a whole (generally a country) dictates what % of people can afford to have nice things.
As a result of that, if your society is in a bad economic situation it may very well be the case that even if everybody was working the same number of multiple jobs, advocating for themselves, and busting their butts, most of those people are still going to be in a shitty situation due to things entirely out of their control. Furthermore, the ones that got out of the shitty situation, even though they're doing all of the same things, only did it due to dumb luck / being in the right place at the right time.
Dave Ramsey is a joke. Anyone who knows the basics of personal finance knows he has no idea what he's talking about and gives advice that is downright statistically incorrect (e.g. his 8% rule nonsense).
Yes, and that's just the start. He preaches against bankruptcy, but he himself declared bankruptcy in 1988. He claims Christianity but has been sued by female ex-employees (one was fired for being pregnant by a guy she was not married to, another was fired for coming out as gay) and is a fully batshit insane covid denier.
And while he preaches this "nObOdY wAnTs To WoRk AnYmOrE" shit, Wikipedia lists his personal value at $55 million as of 2018, which, presumably, he would never have been able to get near if he'd repaid his own debts back in 1988 instead of declaring bankruptcy like the hypocritical fuck he is.
Broadly, I wonder if these folks have no memory for how they were regarded.
The silent generation was broadly characterized as all being lazy beatniks.
The boomers were all characterized as being lazy hippies.
Of course gen xers, millennials, and z have all had their turn.
Every generation broadly bemoans the laziness of the young generation. I recall reading someone who sampled media going back to 19th century, repeatedly finding the "young folks are lazy" rhetoric that is always present.
Some of the earliest Roman historians (like way, way back in the early Republic, before they even did any conquering) used to bemoan the laziness and 'softness' of the current generation compared to the past. Thinking the previous generations were better is a human tradition older than any other aspect of civilization
Socrates complained that the invention of widespread writing would make people lazy and forgetful, because they'd just write everything down, rather than remembering it orally.
Dave Ramsey is a shitheel. His attitude toward money is obsessive and not compatible with healthy relationships or families. I would not be surprised if he were to die completely alone and unloved.
I get the need to shit on him, but you're kind of revealing that you have no clue who this guy is. His whole thing has been pretty firmly anti-loan and pro-savings.
Nobody is going to get their own apartment or home without a loan, at least not anyone whom this is directed to. I don't know him, I don't want to know about him, I'm only criticizing his message. If what you say is true, he also seems to be someone who contradicts himself as well because staying with family is a great way to avoid needless loans, costs, and liabilities that consumer culture tries to instill (specially when their parents get old enough to become extremely dependent and susceptible to scammers). Not only did I not know about him, but you are not painting a great picture of him if he seems to be that inconsistent.
I'm at my parents house for various reasons, and I was actually thinking of moving out this year to be closer to my friends.
And then I had a seizure. And my parents and my sister were instrumental in calling 911 and making sure I didn't end falling to the ground painfully. They stuck with me in the hospital, and have been incredibly supportive. State law doesn't even let me drive for 6 months, so they've helped immensely with all that. I don't think I would've even known I had a seizure if not for them, and I couldn't have taken the right corrective measures for my health.
So, from the very bottom of my heart -- fuck you Dave Ramsey. Go fuck yourself and shove a rusty cactus up your ass. I'd call him a cunt (which I do not do lightly), but he lacks the warmth and the depth to be one.
Oh I'm very fortunate. My parents are overbearing but they let me stay without rent and my mom still cooks for us. I'm incredibly lucky, and I wish everyone could fall back on their family like this.
There's a big problem facing the collective generation, and I sure as hell will help however I can.
Be safe man, hoping for you that it was just a one off seizure and you don't have a recurrence. You don't want to deal with full blown epilepsy. My sister has adult onset epilepsy that they can't really get under control. She can't drive anymore, has to wear a helmet any time she's on her feet, and with the ever-changing med cocktail she gets prescribed, it really affects her mental state and mood.
It seems like it was just a one off. There doesn't seem to be anything clearly wrong neurologically, and my blood sugar was incredibly low at the time. I'm also apparently predisposed to getting seizures at low blood sugar from a condition I have, I was on a medicine at the time which lowered my seizure threshold, and I think another medicine was artificially lowering my blood sugar too. So it was just the perfect storm.
I hope things turn around for your sister :/. That's absolutely awful. I'm incredibly fortunate, but for a while it was possible that could've been me. I hope there's a miracle cure out there to help.
10-hour days working my ass off in a technical "skilled" job to come home to a rented 1B1BR and entitled freaks like this still want to ignore their privileged life and throw shade. Fuck Dave Ramsey and fuck the greedy companies making record profits while also not paying their workers enough.
In every thread like this I have to show up and just say: I have four part-jobs and work every day of the week and I can't afford a house. It's so frustrating to literally be working all the time, have no shot at the American dream anyway, and see privileged fucks like this guy claim I'm not working at all.
Has finance guru Dave Ramsey looked at the cost of housing compared to what working people earn? It's very different now than it was when the boomers were able to buy houses on the income of a single entry-level wage earner per household.
One wonders whether 'finance gurus' aren't just out-of-touch boomers any more
Clearly he is awful and should die in a fire, however I have reached my limit on news stories about how these modern 'generations' are affected differently than other 'generations.' It's a bullshit classification that does not exist in real life and I am tired of hearing manufactured news stories about it. People are people, and we need to all try to get along and help each other. No one is ever thinking about what generation someone else might be part of.
Set him up with a whiteboard and feed him actual, real figures and watch him fail to explain how it would be possible to do what he’s claiming.
No financial gifts or inheritances from parents to use as a deposit, no magical income that comes from starting a business, no magical windfalls from putting house deposit savings into the stock market, just regular old income and student debt.
If he can’t do this, he should be ignored by the financial media.
Here’s a little graph I whipped up. Dave Ramsay was born in Nashville, in 1960. So he would have been a little too young to buy in 1975, but you get the general idea.
He got rich by having $1.2 million in loans. Declaring bankruptcy, then building a financial media empire that teaches people to get rich by avoiding all debt; buying his books; attending his classes; and investing with financial advisors whom his organization carefully vets to assure that their kickback checks clear.
Yeah isn't Dave Ramsey the guy who's financial advice basically amounts to "don't rack up credit card debt and regularly put money in a savings account"?
Which like, yeah, that's not bad advice my any means, but anyone with two brain cells to rub together can tell you that
Cut him some slack, the silver spoon up his ass he was born with is surely causing some pretty incredible irritation after all these years - can't expect him to think clearly all the time.
And this is why he gives garbage financial advice. I've known several people who used their time living at home to build up a nest egg for a down payment.
Good. I hope you have to decide between caviar and avocado toast because you don’t have the money for both because of this you silver spoon in the ear goon.
There's too much emotion on this topic to be able to have a serious and honest conversation about it (either/both ways).
Like with everything else that has to do with human beings, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
And yeah, I know, "Centrist, kill him!!!1!!". But seriously, neither extreme has it 100% right.
Fix the supply of available new homes to purchase so that the costs come down, and stop just sitting on the couch bitching and moaning and go earn the money to buy the houses at the cheaper prices (and while you're off the couch, contact your elected reps and tell them to fix the housing shortage).
It's the earning enough money part that's difficult. We're not getting paid commensurate to our value because what used to be skimmed off the top of the value we produce is now being gouged out in big, ragged chunks.
--Privileged bitching alert--
I have three science degrees, ending in MSc, and my wife has two business degrees ending in BBA. They're all functional, i.e., no one fucked up and went for a different field. We have over $100k in student debt between us. We're highly educated professionals in senior positions in our respective fields. We also live in a high cost of living area.
When my parents were our ages, neither had a degree and, accordingly, no student debt. My father neither graduated from high school nor had a GED. He actually worked in the same field as me, in a position several levels junior to where I'm at now. My mother worked in a field shockingly similar to my wife's, also junior to where my wife is now. They lived in an extremely low cost of living area. Adjusted for inflation, they made approximately $35k more a year than we do now and had vastly lower living expenses.
We can't keep up when wages are depressed and costs are inflated. If my wife and I had the same conditions as our parents, we'd be absolutely killing it financially. Instead, despite being financially responsible, we're currently debating retiring on time or having a kid. We can't have both. Yay.
The kicker is there's absolutely no good reason we shouldn't have economic conditions at least similar to my parent's generation at this stage in our lives. We just make less money, despite actually creating more value per hour, because business owners, shareholders, and the c suite are making more than ever and it's collectively bleeding us dry.
P.s. this comment helped me realize my wife and I have professionally turned into my parents. Gross!
It’s the earning enough money part that’s difficult. We’re not getting paid commensurate to our value because what used to be skimmed off the top of the value we produce is now being gouged out in big, ragged chunks.
I agree, totally. If the price of goods don't go down, then the incomes earned must go up. But we (assuming Americans for this comment) live in a society where its ok for a company to "charge whatever the market will bear", they have no insentives to 'take care' of their fellow citizens. So then individuals have to fight harder/smarter for more income.
The other side of that equation is lower the costs of goods, which in this case is housing. There's currently a weird conjunction of shortage of housing and real estate corporations buying up all available housing to rent that is causing the pricing woes. The latter reminds me of how there was a shortage of computer GPUs for gamers to purchase at a reasonable price, in the recent past, and the market did not correct (much) because it didn't have to, no competition pressure.
When I mention contacting your elected representative, its for things like to talk to them about lowering the price of goods by enacting laws to prevent monopolistic behavior and promote competition. Right now those reps are not doing that because they are getting paid NOT to do that by the companies. Who you elect to office really does matter in the long run, and even moreso your active participation in the process.
The kicker is there’s absolutely no good reason we shouldn’t have economic conditions at least similar to my parent’s generation at this stage in our lives.
Well, you're right, and you're wrong at the same time.
You are right that if Capitialism was working optimally the market would be saturated with product and competition would keep pricing down. But we don't have that, since we rely on goverment to regulate 'bad behavior' Capitalism, and they are not doing that right now.
But at the same time you're wrong, as Capitalism is not a guarantee, its a variance, its random(ish), and there are no guarantees that the good market that exists today will exist thirty years from now. Its one of the reasons that IMO Capitalism kind of sucks (as practiced today), for the welfare and happiness of all human beings.
–Privileged bitching alert–
My personal story was from being a high-school dropout who had to go find work, to being a very poor "rich" homeowner person today. I lived very frugally at first (really cut down on having meals delivered to you, etc. etc.), and over time my money 'snowballed' (there really is truth to that strategy). So I know its possible to overcome any market situation, but its definately not easy, and it takes a toll on you, both body and spirit.
P.s. this comment helped me realize my wife and I have professionally turned into my parents. Gross!
The other day I was visting my 30's son, and he was in the kitchen yelling at his fiance for where some cooking ingredient was (it wasn't angry yelling, just for volume, as she was at the other side of the house). And then he stops, turns his head away from the kitchen pantry cabinet to look squarely at me sitting on the couch nearby, and says the exact same thing you said, "I've turned into my parents." I won't lie, I laughed my ass off, and felt good inside a little bit, in a misery loves company ironic comedic parental revenge sort of way. "Its the 'Circle of Life', bay-bbeeee!". We both laughed.
Bottom line, you just gotta surround yourself with loved ones and ride out the bad storms, and seek happiness where you can, day-by-day. And learn to fish, and not just ask to be given fish all the time (unless you're really in trouble). Oh, and try to pay things forward. When things are better for your neighbors, they tend to end up being better for you too.
I know it's not a comfortable thought, and it'd be nice if we didn't have to, but you considered moving to a lower cost of living area (whether its an hour from your current job, if the +2 hours daily makes it worthwhile) or finding a job in a state with lower cost of living where your skills are in demand?
If you make 100k/yr and 90% of your income goes to necessities, then it makes fiscal sense to take a paycut to 70k/yr when your necessities only take 40℅ of your income.
It's nice to live in nice places, and moving and leaving your family/friends behind is a horrible thing to have to do, but it doesn't have to be forever and this is a matter of survival.
Funny how hot takes are often the nuanced, grounded in reality takes. I guess that's what makes them spicy... people like things that confirm their beliefs and insecurities, and the truth is one of the most disturbing things for a lot of people to hear.
People's default setting is to stay in their bubbles, yes. But I'm hoping that we can actually get people to talk through the issue in an honest non-emotional way, and see if any resolution could be had, vs. what we get now, the repeated daily posts of raw emotion to enhance conflict and prevent good discussion.