by Beks
I received a lot of comments over the years that I should stop listening to Dave Ramsey. There are better, faster, easier methods to pay debt, earn, save, and grow money.
Why do I still listen to him? Two big reasons…
1) I’m debt free and I’ve stayed that way for 5 years. It’s like telling someone who lost a ton of weight that their diet plan sucks and there are better ways to lose weight. I’ve lost the ‘weight’. I’ve kept it off. The method was effective. To me, that’s kinda all that matters.
2) 2017 happened. I had the money to pay off my debt in 2016 but ‘Dave said’ to push pause on paying debt when pregnant and pile up the cash just in case something went wrong. I had three very healthy, very easy pregnancies up to that point. This just seemed like bad ‘Dave’ advice. Way too conservative. Then my son’s heart stopped. Emergency c-section. NICU. Rough recovery. Never once did I worry about money because I had plenty piled up just in case. I was able to solely focus on my son. It was worth every single extra penny I paid in interest.
Dave is very low risk. He leans heavily on Tortoise moves. Sure, I could do WAY better, more complicated, things with my money than pay cash for my house. I could finance it and invest that cash. There ARE better financial moves. Moves that involve more risk and more reward… but quite possibly, more loss. But here’s where I’m at. I can own my house outright. I can continue to invest 15% in retirement. I can continue to only buy things I can afford.
…And I’ll retire just fine.
I choose the tortoise.
Beks is a full-time government employee who enjoys blogging late into the night after her four kids have gone to sleep. She’s been married to Chris, her college sweetheart, for 15 years. In 2017, after 3 long years working the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps, they paid off more than $70K and became debt free. When she’s not working or blogging, she’s exploring the great outdoors.
