re: Dave Ramsey sued for $150 million over endorsing deceptive timeshare-exit company

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I am a CFP and have a master's in finance...I can that, unequically, he is the worst person in personal finance...

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Maybe you should have taken an English class or two.

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Probably some real estate appreciation in there, too, but I'm not sure what difference it makes. Basically anything in a retirement fund is traded in a liquid market, so that's actually a pretty good place to have wealth.

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Certainly better than a savings account.

I would say that I used to enjoy Ramsey, and he (at least at an elementary level) gives solid common sense financial advice.

Don't spend more than you make.
Have an emergency fund.
Set aside 15% of your income into tax advantaged retirement vehicles.
Pay off your house.

Most people who just do that will end up just fine. It sounds so simple, because it is that simple.

My issue with Ramsey is that he absolutely refuses to admit when he's wrong.

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Most people who just do that will end up just fine. It sounds so simple, because it is that simple.

My issue with Ramsey is that he absolutely refuses to admit when he's wrong.

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Personal finance problems are most always about the "personal" part and not the finance. People don't math themselves into financial problems so trying to "math them" out of their problems won't help for most.

YouTube - Caleb Hammer

Caleb Hammer has some interesting content where he helps people in financial trainwrecks.

The people he brings on have issues with spending and impulse control and are buried in debt and past stupid decisions. Need to give them hope and momentum and the snowball method does exactly that.

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The concept of a time-share exit scheme is fundamentally flawed. This should be self-evident to all.

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You have to be a complete and total moron to get into a time share to begin with....only such idiots could fall for the second con which is time share exit. Even without the obvious flaws in time shares it'd be the height of stupidity to buy one...the truth is readily available but folks still fall for it.

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Someone explain why it is so hard to get out of a timeshare. I hear these commercials on Sirius and it sounds worse than owning a house that is underwater.

When I think of timeshare I think of Disney timeshare which to me seems to be a good investment if you go all the time, and you can easily sell it. Are these crappy timeshares that no one wants to buy and the original buyer was conned into getting one?

And for the record I don’t own nor will I ever own a timeshare.

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All of them, Disney included, cost as much in maintenance fees as simply renting the same place for the time you will actually be using it. And those fees continuously go up. There is no advantage to owning one over renting one...in fact it is just the opposite...because owning it means you are forever on the hook for maintenance fees whether you ever use it or not...and you can't give it away because the sells team is expert at getting folks to hand over piles of cash and anyone interested is suspect of your giving it away...

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I don’t agree with everything Dave says, but I think he has done more good than bad for society.

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Yeah, I don’t agree with everything he says, but his steps for getting out of debt are legit.

I basically used it but not the “account for every dollar” bullshite or no credit cards (I have an AMEX that I pay off monthly so it’s not really a credit card. More like a charge card.).

Paid off my smallest debts first and after it’s paid off, put that money towards paying off the next. It worked well and quite fast.

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I was listening one day when a man with terminal illness in his late 50s called in despair. Dave asked him why he didn’t have life insurance and the man said he had a 20 year policy that had expired and that upon his death his dependents would be destitute. It was profoundly sad as Dave had no solution to offer.

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To be fair, a man in his late 50's should have savings. Not just rely on life insurance to pass along wealth.

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The next call, literally within seconds, was a young guy asking about life insurance in his 20s. Without missing a beat, Dave offered the knee-jerk advice to get a 20 year term. A 30 year term would have been 10-15 dollars more. But Dave, slave to his own convention, with the previous callers misery still hanging in the air , told a guy to get a policy that would expire before his kids were even out of High School.

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How old are his kids? Negative 4?

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Paying off your smallest balance first is also bad advice,

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I didn’t “run the numbers on it”, but it works.

Obviously paying off higher interest debt first should be a priority, but sometimes people don’t have enough extra money to pay it off quicker. By paying off smaller debts first, it frees up the money to pay off the higher interest debts.