What We Talk About When We Talk About Dave Ramsey

At last, the time has come for us to talk about Dave Ramsey.

For folks who are unfamiliar, Ramsey is a personal finance industry veteran who runs a radio show and has written several books on money. He's a boomer (60 years old), an evangelical Christian, and a conservative.

On Thursday, Ramsey went on Fox News and said the following:

"I don't believe in a stimulus check, because if $600 or $1,400 changes your life, you've got other issues going on. You have a career problem, you have a debt problem, you have a relationship problem, you have a mental health problem. Something else is going on if $600 changes your life."

You can watch the full video here (this quote starts at about 3:58).

So uh, yeah Dave, something else IS going on. A pandemic that has left a lot of people unemployed! Naturally, the backlash to this appearance has been swift.

I'm not writing this essay just to dunk on Ramsey's video appearance, though. I wanted to explore how we, people who care about both personal finance and social justice, interact online with Ramsey and his ideology.

For folks in personal finance who lean left-of-center politically, Ramsey has become an avatar representing everything we hate about "traditional" money advice. Being blocked by Ramsey on Twitter is a badge of honor, and every time a bad Dave take comes out, there we are, ever ready with a quippy post or joke.

And yeah, he sucks. This summer, an ex-employee sued his company, Ramsey Solutions, alleging that she was fired because she was pregnant. He defied a COVID-19 stay at home order, keeping staff at the office during the coronavirus pandemic. There's also this wild social media incident.

I know his advice has helped a lot of people, and I'll never turn my nose up at that. We've gotten to a place in personal finance where this advice is no longer taking into account today's needs, though. Ramsey is old school — he thinks taking on debt is something that irresponsible people do.

We know that most Americans' debt comes from either high healthcare bills or a decision they made at 18-years-old when they decided what college they wanted to go to. The problem isn't that these folks are living outside of their means by buying big houses, slick cars, and fancy clothes. It's that the things required to 1. live and 2. become upwardly mobile have become impossibly expensive.

His financial advice hasn't caught up.

All of this comes up every few months in personal finance communities online as we re-hash all the reasons Ramsey is bad. It's Dave Ramsey discourse, over and over again.

I'm not going to lie, I love to see someone who I disagree with get roasted online. Don't we all?

I'm starting to wonder, though, whether the more air we give to Ramsey, the better off he is. Lobbing criticism his way means we have entered his playing field, accepted his reality, and given his ideas credence. They've become worth talking about, even if it's because they are bad.

When I see the discourse emerge, I can't help but be reminded of Innuendo Studios' brilliant video series, The Alt-Right Playbook. The series explores different rhetorical tactics the alt-right uses to ensure their voices are heard online.

I'm not saying Ramsey is alt-right, and I frankly think that this series best applies to folks who aren't in positions of power. However, within one of the videos, there's a discussion about how the alt-right hijacks online posts that I think applies here.

Let me explain. Let's say you log onto Facebook and post about how much you love dogs. A cat diehard gets up in your comment section, explaining all the ways that dogs, in their view, suck. They make up lies: "dogs eat babies!" "dogs want to kill us all!" "dog-lovers support death!" You refute those lies with all kinds of facts and data points, but the cat-lover won't stop.

Even if you know that your argument trounces theirs, the cat-lover's position remains the same. What's worse, though, is that they've used your post on your page to permeate their ideas even further.

I think there's a degree of this going on when we talk about Ramsey. The situation with him is a little different, to be sure. His ideas are everywhere, which means they demand refuting. When you think of personal finance, you likely think of him or Suze Orman (although I hope you think of She Spends!).

I couldn't help but wonder... When we keep responding to his inconsiderate takes with long screeds like this one, are we helping his ideas continue to spread? Is it like quote-tweeting Donald Trump to explain why we disagree?

I don't really know the answer to those questions, not now at least. My hope is that Ramsey and his vision for personal finance slowly fade away and make way for a more nuanced approach to money. Until then, this is my last contribution to the Dave Ramsey discourse.

All future incidents will be met with an eye roll, a "screw that guy," and the knowledge that we're going to change things for the better.