Dave Ramsey is a hack.
broken clock tho
All you need to know about Dave Ramsey: i worked on his Jaguar XK.
Is that a particularly expensive jaguar? When I was car shopping I saw some jags for 20k or less so owning a Jag means absolutely nothing when it comes to wealth.
The trick is that it costs an absolute fortune to maintain them, that’s why they’re cheap used. I believe there Is a saying that goes something like “the only car more expensive than a luxury car is a used luxury car”
He’s right for most people first beginning to improve their financial health. He has probably gotten more people out of debt than any other ‘guru’. If that’s a hack, so be it, it works.
He once fired a pregnant employee because she wasn’t married and therefore must have had premarital sex. They’ve fired 9 people for pre marital sex. Wacky
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Is he the idiot who demands you only pay for things in cash and store it in labeled envelopes?
Doesn’t that 1950s(?idk) advice kinda work for some people?
“Demands” though that’s odd
Nah he’s alright. There is no nuance in his advice but for the majority of his listeners that’s probably a good thing.
Yeah he has some shit personally takes and I hate the way he runs his company. He does give pretty decent financial advice though
I can give better advice in a similarly easy to consume manner, applicable to most.
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Invest in a low cost target date fund. Look at Vanguard target date funds for examples and pick a year close to your expected retirement date.
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Pay your highest interest debt before lower.
Both of these pieces of advice make you more money than doing what Ramsay says and are equally easy to understand.
Yes, but do people do it? No.
Do people actually do what Ramsey suggests, even if it isn’t mathematically perfect? Yes.
You’re under estimating the human factor.
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Dave Ramsey has excellent financial advice for a certain type of person. I bet 90% of people reading this need Dave Ramsey style advice.
In this land of legalised extortion in the form of insurance my friend who is in his mid 30s and been driving over a decade with no claims has to pay £700 per month.
My mum wanted to add my sister (again mid thirties and driving for nearly 20 years now with no claims) to her policy so she could borrow her car for a week and then maybe use the car once a month if that and they wanted an additional £1000 a month for the privaledge.
Fucking scum.
Now if there were a /c/fuckinsurance - I’d be all over that. I love my cars, I HATE insurance companies.
Per month?! Wtf are you driving? (Late 40s here, paying around £400 per year for my electric mini insurance)
My bad, i wrote per month but i meant per year, that was my mistake. He is driving a 1.4 turbo new shape VW Scirocco (sp). My mothers car is a 1.3 Citroen C3 so hardly expensive, luxury or even quick cars. Even £400 is disgustingly over priced in my opinion though, the way this country does insurance is vile.
Australia’s system of buying registration which then covers your basic insurance (third party cover) which is like a tax and insurance cost combined for the car is much more logical, then if you want to you can buy additional fully comp cover for the car none of this insuring per driver per car bullshit.
Car insurance is expensive because cars are both risky and highly destructive. Hence, making a market for them involves high prices.
Regardless of what you think of insurance companies, there’s just no way around this - you could nationalize car insurance and it would still either be really expensive, either on the policy level or else born by taxes.
Certainly not. I just put in some data in an insurance broker thingy and I would be able to get insurance for approx. 120€/month with partially comprehensive coverage (including obligatory liability insurance). These outrageous prices are definitely a US thing.
The U.S is different in that car insurance has to cover medical expenses for others when you are at fault, combined with the risk of driving quite frankly being higher in the U.S. With medical costs being extremely high in the U.S, prices follow that fact.
I’m not trying to argue against the fact that they are both risky and highly destructive, it is definitely necessary. My issue is more with the way that it works in the UK. I think the system in somewhere like Australia is a lot fairer and isnt inherently designed to bleed people of the maximum amount of money like it is in the UK.
Stop throating the boot of exploitive companies.
They’re not, they’re complaining about the problems inherent to cars.
Which is ignoring the problems inherant to auto insurance, which is fundamentally a greater force in the price/cost of car insurance than the danger of cars.
Yes, cars can be dangerous, but that’s not why car insurance is expensive, it’s expensive because car insurance companies have a completely captive market in the US- one that must pay whatever the insurance comapny dictates.
As a result, they set the price as high as they can get away with, and then refuse to actually pay it out anyway.
Don’t make excuses for the insurance companies. The risk is the whole point, and certainly does not excuse their gouging.
You’ll notice other countries do not, in fact, have to deal with this level of price gouging, which implies it’s nothing to do with the cars themselves- it’s just the insurance companies, and it always has been.
The risk is the whole point, and certainly does not excuse their gouging.
The risk is the point though. High risk activities will cost more to insure because they’ll need to be paid out more often. Couple that with the high destruction possible, and you have frequent accidents that can all cause very expensive damage, necessitating a high base price for insurance.
The price gouging is just capitalism, and I doubt anyone here is going to argue that capitalism isn’t bad.
yeah of fucking course. you guys are forced to buy insurance in the US, they have a big juicy captive market.
There’s tons of car insurance companies. We can shop around. Most people don’t, for some reason.
You can shop around for insurance, you don’t have to just take what they give you.
Assuming you begin investing at the age of 20 and invest $554 per month for 45 years at a 6% growth rate, you would yield 1.4 million. Definitely not MILLIONS.
6% is very conservative though. Even at 7%, which is a widely accepted inflation adjusted number, it’s over 2 mil.
The other thing is that the monthly investment amount should increase when income does, which at minimum should match inflation.
What commonly goes unsaid in these conversations of insurance cost is the immediate disputes that occur with the provider.
Why am I paying tens of thousands a year to engage in an argument when making a claim?
I was once rear ended at a red light. I was knocked unconscious and the driver drove off. A few kind witnesses called police who took a report. They got half his plate imprinted on my bumper, but never tracked him down. I had State Farm, and I was even paying extra for the “uninsured driver coverage”. They said they couldn’t cover it because until they had another driver’s information I was automatically at fault, even with the police report and witness accounts. They said it didn’t count as uninsured driver because it’s possible the guy had insurance. I was flabbergasted.
In the end I had a concussion and needed to take time off work for recovery and my short term disability insurance ended up suing State Farm because they didn’t want to pay for my medical treatment. State Farm agreed to cover medical care but only if it was recorded as my fault and I paid my deductible. In anger I tried to switch insurance companies but found out they have a shared database and since it was recorded as a hit and run my fault, nobody else would take me. And State Farm jacked my rate up 30%…
I realised in a similar, though less detrimental, encounter that true insurance comes in the form of dash cameras. For the equivalent of an insurance payment or two, a high fidelity video of the entire vehicle surroundings can be had.
Honestly though, with a few witnesses and half a plate, it’s a surprise they couldn’t find the car that drove into you. Decerning the colour, and style of car, surely it’d be only a handful of vehicles matching both the description and the numbers.
I’m sorry that happened to you.
That would require a cop to do more than the bate minimum, so its just not gonna happen.
State Farm also screwed over a guy I know. He dumped their policy after they wouldn’t pay anything on his accident (much less dramatic than yours) where they had some kind of parking related crash with 2 of their cars at home. State Farm told him that he could not be covered for an accident with another car on his policy because he “can’t sue himself” so it sounds like they are only paying out when they have someone to sue about it.
You are not kidding!
I got a motorcycle and paid for insurance. When someone stole my bike and police caught the guy and put it in the impound, my scummy ass insurance called me to go see if it’s okay? Like bro, that’s your job.
Then they said if I was willing to sign a contract that the bike was fine without allowing me to see it. I said no.
Finally they gave up and wrote me a check for the cost of the bike.
Goes to show how strange modern life is that it was easier for them to cut a cheque than send someone down there. Happens all the time unfortunately. I wonder if someone at the impound lot rode it home.
Not a motorcycle, but my car was hit (along with several others) by a guy evading the police. I wasn’t even in it, we were in a city and cars were parked along the street, and he came over a hill, ran a red light, t-boned someone, and then bounced against a bunch of cars down the street.
When I got the police report, I filed a claim with my insurance, which was the same insurance company as the criminal. They originally told me that, “There were 7 vehicles involved in this accident, and other vehicles were damaged much worse than yours, so we’re not sure if his policy will cover all of the damage… So we’ll have to file the claim under your policy, you’d just have to pay your deductible.”
Absolutely not, I told her. “Well Sir, you have to unders-”
“No, ma’am, YOU need to understand that your customer’s inability to be a responsible citizen is NOT my problem, and I am NOT having my premiums go up, or paying my deductible, when I did absolutely nothing wrong.” After escalating to a manager and giving her an earful while threatening to drop my policy with them effective immediately, they miraculously realized his policy would cover the damage to my car. Easy day, right?
Now, I’ll be honest: The damage to my car was completely cosmetic, but I was poor and could have really used some extra cash, hence why I was pursuing it. Well, brought the car in to be looked over by the insurance folks, and the assessed damage was like $800. Cool, I asked her for my check so I could go home.
“Oh, well, Sir, you still have a lien on the vehicle, and normally we would send it to your bank, and they would tell you where to go and then pay the repair shop.”
Oh, cool, well, that’s not what we’re doing, I already have a shop lined up, I said, but needed the money for the parts.
Big tall dude comes over, also an insurance employee, as the woman and I are going back and forth, and he chimes in and goes, “Well, Sir, y’know, typically the bank holding the lien wants to handle these things, and, y’know, if the repairs aren’t made and they repossess the vehicle, you could owe the repair costs.”
My response: “Huh, fascinating. Sounds like a conversation between my bank and I, and with all due respect, I don’t understand who you are to have that discussion on their behalf.”
“Just cut him the check,” as he walks away.
I fucking hate insurance companies.
I had a shitty white Kia Rio that I wrote off in a snowstorm. I borrowed my dad’s car to drive while I looked for a replacement I could afford, and after a few weeks my insurance said ‘we paid you the coverage. If you don’t put a new car on your policy, we’ll cancel it.’ ok, fine. I put my old junker (car before the Rio) on it - wasn’t even road worthy, but I had accident forgiveness on this policy and if I had to start over I’d get higher premiums.
I found a car a week later. Called the broker to switch the policy.
'we can’t remove this car from the policy unless we contact your bank first ’
What.
They claimed because I had bought my Rio with a bank loan that they couldn’t remove my junker without permission from the bank.
I argued with this person politely for 10 minutes, pointing out that I’d paid the car off 2 years prior. They said ‘well I’ll need to check with the underwriter then.’ fine. I get a call back 30m later, same person. ‘no, we need permission from the bank according to the underwriter.’
This pissed me off because I knew I was being lied to. “Now I know you’re lying to me. I have the cheque from the underwriter cashed in my account. They would not have issued it to me if there was any issue with the bank. I am not a customer of that bank, have not been for 2 years.”
‘well sir, I need to confirm that with the bank’
“If you contact the bank in reference to me in any way, shape, or form, I will sue you for breach of privacy and file complaints with every government office that I can. DO NOT CALL THE BANK. SWITCH IN THE NEW CAR.”
They refused. I called back 2 hours later, got someone else. Told them I needed the new car switched in.
They did it, and a week later I filed a written complaint to the broker about the other rep, firmly underscoring the lying.
No idea if it was related or not, but the branch got downsized away less than a year later.
Anyway, fuck insurance companies.
here’s me, a grown ass adult with a car i paid off like 4 years ago - nothing special, a smallish commuter POS that gets 40mpg that i literally use to drive 4 miles to work and back.
i was paying about $630/year because i pay for a year at a time, and it’d be almost double that to pay monthly, like what the actual fuck? anyways, a few months ago i get this email from the insurance company telling me “hey get ready your policy will renew in 3 months, be sure to double check your payment method” so i log into my account and they were gonna raise my premium to $970/yr and there was literally no obvious way to see that they were gonna do that. it was a case of logging in, going through multiple levels of menus to get to the future policy, download a pdf of that policy, then view it offline.
well, i’m pissed, so i call them to find out what the hell they’re doing and why and they claimed it’s because i had gotten a speeding ticket. of course, they had zero information to share with me about that speeding ticket - no ticket number, no date/time, no address, nothing. i sure as hell don’t recall getting a speeding ticket, and in any case, with a spotless driving record, you’d think there’d be some kind of interfacing with me about it, but no. they claimed the ticket was real and i’d need to contact my DMV to find out more.
so i call them, the DMV, and after some hassle, find out they have ZERO record of any speeding ticket. so… back on the phone with the insurance company and they just wanna give me the shaft and the runaround no exceptions. i mean, i’m pissed now because it’s OBVIOUS fraud, right? Anyways, i get absolutely nowhere. so i tell them to cancel my policy and i woulda thought about contacting a lawyer about a possible case or something but, naw…
i still have the car, and it’s parked being unused. I swapped to riding bikes to and from work, sometimes an ebike, sometimes a fixie, and i’m the only cyclist on the road around here that I’ve ever seen and it’s sometimes really sketchy. but i plan to ride through the winter, dry or snowy, i don’t care.
it can get complicated, because i’m a single father, but honestly, fuck auto insurance, fuck cars, fuck car brain. we gotta make a stand at some point and I lament that we can’t really do it collectively.
I’m with you there.
Not too long ago, my company was informed by letter (as you should have been) of a price increase. I can’t remember exactly, but I want to say it was a 600% increase on the company’s rates. There’s never been any claims on the policy, they just decided they could do it to enough of their clients, and probably enough would pay it that it wouldn’t matter they’d lose a bunch.
I understand the provide we switched to actually provides greater coverage for less than the original amount we paid the first provider. Unbelievable.
It wasn’t specifically for insurance reasons, but I got rid of my car after I noticed I wasn’t driving very far. Now we have a couple cargo trailers and we do the shopping and the errands just as easily and we’re saving tens of thousands doing it. We go through the winter as well, it’s not for everyone but dress appropriately and have lights and you’ll do great.
My job is shopping around for third party customer support vendors. One of their pitches I kept hearing was, “We don’t lie to you about times.”
And then they shared how their competitors were trained on a method of customer service where their goal was to get you to hang up as fast as possible to increase their velocity Metrics. So they would literally lie to you. Thinking it was a joke, I googled and yeah, apparently that was a REAL tactic done for decades.
sure, maybe. but FUCK Dave Ramsey.
I’m out of the loop. What’d they do?
Dave Ramsey is an out of touch asshole though.
Memes circulating with this dude right now, even if positioning him as a chud, are a way to launder this dude as just a legit money guy. Sure, he has some basic, broad financial advice you can consider if you can see through all the Jesus and have no other options, but more than anything else, he’s a vile human being.
Eat religious shit dave ramsey.
Dave Ramsey hasn’t tried to buy a reliable used car in the last decade, at least. You aren’t going to find anything under about $10k that’s actually reliable where I am. A mid-90s Toyota with 300,000 miles maybe, but not anything under 150,000.
With the $554 average new car payment in the original post, you can afford that $10k new-to-you used car outright in cash every 18 months.
Average price of a used car in the US, right now, is $29,000. Which means that for a $554 payment, it’s going to be 5.4 years rather than 1.5. From there, you need to figure out how many miles you put on a car in a year, make some rough guesses about how many miles the average car has left before the cost to repair exceeds the cost of replacing, etc. Obvs. a high mileage used car is going to require significantly more maintenance than a new car will (…in most cases, as long as you aren’t buying a new Land Rover or Jaguar), so you’ll need to figure that in as well. You’ll probably want good insurance, even if you’re only required to carry minimal liability insurance, because any accident could be catastrophic for your finances if you can’t afford to repair your car.
It’s a bit of a death spiral; wages are still too low, car prices are too high.
Sure, but in 2023, someone could already be selling a 2022 as used. That $29k number is going to be skewed by those who sell younger cars. You can still find used cars much cheaper than this.
For that $554 payment, you would need $6648 in additional yearly maintenance costs on an older vehicle to compare. That’s like a new engine or transmission, every year!
Anecdotally, I drive a 32-year-old car that I purchased, coincidentally, for $3200 around 7 years ago. I haven’t spent even close to $6648 in maintenance that entire time (probably not even another $3200).
To my original claim - finding something that’s reasonable mileage, and in good mechanical condition, for under $10k, is quite a challenge at this point. I sold a 2008 Honda Civic Si with >200,000 miles last year that was not running, had rust, and generally needed a fair amount of work, and had an asking price of $4k. I got fifty offers in under 12 hours. It was crazy.
As a pedestrian, I’m glad not to support big bike chain lube, I’m saving dozens of pennies annually
Oh, you’re one of those shills for the shoe-leather industry! 😜
Millions? I don’t think so. There is no investment that would turn $30K or whatever into millions that was safe enough to work for the majority of people. But it would be a significant help.
That being said, for most people, the amount you’d spend to live in a place where a car isn’t needed or constantly paying for ride share or taxis greatly exceeds the amount you’d save by not having a car for the vast majority of people, and that’s not even getting into the ableism issue.
And sure we could get into buying a cheaper, used car or whatever, but in the long term the maintenance costs, having to buy another car sooner, and other financial risks to cars outside of warrantee over a lifetime will add up similarly unless you’re really lucky or can repair your own cars.
$554 a month at 5% growth is $440k after 30 years. So yeah not millions.
S&P averaged about 10% over the last 30 years. That means it would be over 1.2 million.
Working life is more like 40 years. Those back end years are huge, it goes up to 840k. Which is why you’re supposed to start on your 401k right away. Of course 99% of people don’t get this talk until they’re 40; go through a poverty period after high school; or never make it out of paycheck to paycheck living for other reasons. (Like medical debt)
Very few people get the good pay, good contributions, and consequently the good retirement. We also completely lie to people about retirement. We tell them they have to scrimp and save so they aren’t homeless when they’re 80. In reality half of us will be dead by 75 and half again by 85.
And sure we could get into buying a cheaper, used car or whatever, but in the long term the maintenance costs, having to buy another car sooner, and other financial risks to cars outside of warrantee over a lifetime will add up similarly unless you’re really lucky or can repair your own cars.
Buying a low-mileage used car and even paying for a shop to do the maintenance is almost always cheaper than buying something with $500+ monthly payments. I don’t actually agree for the most part with Dave Ramsey (even about the entirety of this post)…but he’s correct that it is cheaper.
Most Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. So any car for that amount is not going to survive long. So most Americans still get loans for used cars.
And with interest rates so high, a payment of $550 will only get you about $25K. That’s enough for a decent new small sedan, but if you have kids (especially if 3 or more), that’s probably the minimum needed to get a used minivan that will last a while.
Anything else is only going to last a few years at best before needing major repairs.
I just did an autotrader search and in my (very unaffordable) area, there were lots of serviceable cars under 10k. If you live in a place with a garage you can even buy a used EV and eliminate whole categories of maintenance costs.
The whole point is to buy something that requires smaller or no monthly payments, and then bank the savings and eventually buy something better. “A couple of years” can do the trick in some cases.
$10k for a serviceable minivan or other vehicle that would work as a primary car for parents? What about the problem that most households need two incomes and very few can commute together due to different schedules and locations and adding even an extra hour or two of daycare in order to share a car is often as much as a second car payment.
As I said, $25k is probably plenty for a small sedan for a single person who only uses it for commuting and grocery shopping, but not likely for people with multiple children that a small sedan or coupe would not work, households with multiple income earners, households with teenagers who also need a car to work, or all the other scenarios where a single, small, used sedan that’s just good enough for a short daily commute is reasonable.
$550 in car payments for a houshold is not unreasonable for the vast majority of households and usually doesn’t equate to frivolous spending.
$550 in car payments for a houshold is not unreasonable for the vast majority of households and usually doesn’t equate to frivolous spending.
I don’t think I necessarily disagree with this but the reality is that when you buy new you’re always paying more. When you buy new on credit, you’re paying even more than that.
So, like I said in the beginning, I don’t 100% agree with this dude about even this whole post. But it is cheaper to buy used and even pay for the maintenance. It’s a point almost not worth making because of how obviously correct it is.
and that’s not even getting into the ableism issue.
Infrastructure that requires people to drive is far more ableist than the inverse. As many people with a disability can’t drive at all (or driving is a significant challenge).
Right. That was what I was saying.
I didn’t get into that issue, but it’s a major one, and not just for people confined to a wheelchair who might be able to get assistance through government sponsored programs, but also people with certain types of PTSD, Autism, ADHD, anxiety issues, etc., (including lots of veterans) or people with vision issues or other disabilities that aren’t considered “enough” of a disability to get help, but make it difficult or impossible to drive.
The whole, where do you live thing is super important. The last time we moved my wife and I were very adamant about a specific maximum commute length in car, or a length by transit. And getting somewhere to live that was easy to commute from. We compared the price including mass transit commute at the max distance to anything we were getting closer with the commute included from there too.
The differences were absolutely significant. Many places were cheaper to live an hour away, even with car payments, insurance, and gas. That’s absolutely ridiculous and part of so many problems from climate change to motor vehicle deaths.
We need to enforce mixed development, the people who work in an area need to be able to afford living in that area. Pushing the workers out should not be acceptable.
That being said, for most people, the amount you’d spend to live in a place where a car isn’t needed or constantly paying for ride share or taxis greatly exceeds the amount you’d save by not having a car for the vast majority of people, and that’s not even getting into the ableism issue.
I disagree with everything else you say, as the other replies to you point out. But this is a really good point.
That’s really exorbitant insurance. I don’t know where he lives or what is situation is but $350 a month is insane.
You can buy a very nice e-bike every year with that money.
I’d put money on a pretty messy driving history for the insurance to be that much.
Wouldn’t surprise me if that neighbour has been in a few accidents, gotten a bunch of speeding tickets, and/or is a young male.
Also depends on what they are driving.
If you pay 500$ a month for 30 years at 5% interest compounded monthly you would contribute $180k and would have $416,129 so not really a million. You would need a little less than 9.5% interest to get a million. 2% interest is only getting you $246k which when you take into account inflation 2-3% normal average minus 5% one of the higher realistic interests that is what you are actually making .
If you pay 500$ a month for 30 years at 5% interest compounded monthly you would contribute $180k and would have $416,129 so not really a million. You would need a little less than 9.5% interest to get a million. 2% interest is only getting you $246k which when you take into account inflation 2-3% normal average minus 5% one of the higher realistic interests that is what you are actually making .
Ramsey is always very optimistic about investment returns. His advice isn’t too bad though.
Spoken like someone who’s long since stopped worrying about having to commute without mass transit available.
If mass transit is available and reasonable then yeah, go off. But otherwise please stop blaming the victims of Capitalism.
This was the best thing about living in New York. No need for a car. No expenses paid in car payments, gas, or insurance. People claim that New York City is expensive, and rents are certainly higher than most places, but you end up saving so much money just on the cost of owning a car alone. Overall, the cost of living for me was much cheaper in New York City than it is now in Orlando.
I wish I had the resources to go back.
I live in a major city with decent (not excellent, just decent) transportation.
Yokels from small towns talk about how “expensive” it is until I ask them how much they pay for rent and food. And it always surprises them theyre paying the same damn amount thanks to inflation.
Eh… Used to live in the city in a 500 sq ft condo built in '75 and similar units would be rented for the same price I’m paying to rent a 900sq ft apartment built in 2014 in a small town with all services one could need… Bonus, I don’t need my car to do the groceries because it’s 2 minutes door to door from where I live now compared to 5 minutes in my car when I was at the condo.
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Every used car I’ve ever owned cost thousands in repairs that were unexpected. Head gaskets, alternators, O2 sensors, intake manifolds, ignition coils, brake calipers, radiators, every fucking time. It’s cheaper to just get a five year loan on a 2 year old car around $20k than to fuck with anything used.
That’s really close to a Camry hybrid too, then you get a warranty plus residual value is going to be very high.
A 2 year old car is used. It’s like c/fuckcars just turns peoples brains off when discussing vehicles.
I think context gives away the intent of the message. My previous 20-year-old car cost $6,000 in repairs and the check engine light was still on. My 2022 car just works.
You can just admit you used the wrong word to express your point.
