GuruWatch

Dave Ramsey is a guru with a loyal throng of fans. Either you love him or you hate him. JLP from AllFinancialMatters made his opinion known, although his post didn’t say much. Any attack on Ramsey, no matter how brief, attracts vitriliolic comments from both lovers and haters. Here are a few of those comments.

• People who charge an arm and a leg for financial organization tools drive me nuts… So maybe you do have to spend money to save money, but why not go for something less extortionate?
• Seems like Ramsey is looking after his own “personal” finance.
• That stuff is pretty valuable information for people not knowing how to get out from under financial pressure.
• Not to sound like his biggest fan or anything but the stuff that you get is pretty good.
• it’s a rock-solid program that the most overwhelmed can understand. i give him kudos for making the tidal wave of personal finance a bite-by-bite program that affords those who don’t have the wherewithal to make something positive from their mess.
• Good call. Save your money and pay off your debt [rather than buy Ramsey’s products].

A Penny Saved is impressed with Ramsey’s book, and he is inspired:

[The book is] sound and isnt a get rich quick or eliminate your debt in 30 days kind of program. It’s a life long commitment to living a sound financial life. I’m fairly sure that we will have begun our own Total Money Makeover soon.

Now, Dave Ramsey often invokes God in his message. But one religious individual shows some of Ramsey’s reasoning conflicts with some biblical teachings. Ariah explains why he (she?) ditched Dave Ramsey (and once again, the cultists are back en force to eagerly defend. You’re better off ignoring most of the 100+ comments, but this is from Ariah’s post:

The thing that bothers me is the second half of the “live like no one else.” statement. The idea is that once you’ve paid off your debt and saved your money you can spend it on what you want to. Now most folks want to hear that and so they are happy to listen and hear what Dave has to say. I have trouble cause my Bible (and I’m pretty sure it’s the same one) seems to say we are to be sacrificial in our lives, regardless of how well we’ve saved, etc. And that we should be good stewards, and wise consumers no matter what income/debt we have.

Here is the piece of bad advice that Ramsey gave that set Ariah over the edge:

A lady called in yesterday with a question. It was quite simple, her husband and her are debt free. The question was which is better: their current minivan or trading it for an SUV of equal value?… Dave’s Response: This is a silly question that you should not fret over… She’s being a “tight-wad…”

Ariah explained that the difference lies in the better gas mileage of the current minivan, and the Bible requires its adherents to be wise stewards.

Cap from StopBuyingCrap.com is assembling a list of gurus he hates and a few he doesn’t hate. Check out what he has to say about Trump and Kiyosaki.

The real reason why Kiyosaki is on this list though, is because of his irresponsible recommendations and suggestions on achieving financial independence. Many other personal finance bloggers have frequently mention his ill-considered financial advice as a Yahoo Finance columnist, which mostly consist of the same advices mentioned above.

Read Cap’s full analysis of Donald Trump, Robert Kiyosaki, Dave Ramsey, and others.

GolbGuru from Money, Matter, and More Musings ran the numbers and pointed out a major flaw with Dave Ramsey’s Drive Free, Retire Rich philosophy.

Dave Ramsey says:

You want a brand new sports car that would normally cost you $475 a month. The car you are driving now is worth $1,500.

If you take that $475 and pay yourself instead of paying the dealer, you’ll have $4750 in just ten months. Add that to the $1,500 you can get for your current car, and you can pay cash for a used $6250 car. That’s a major upgrade in car in just 10 months-without owing the bank a dime!

But let’s keep going. If you kept saving at that rate, you’d have another $4750 in another ten months. Chances are, less than a year later, you could sell your $6250 car for about what you paid for it. This means that you can step up again-with-cash-into an excellent $11,000 used car just twenty months from today! Not Bad!

GolbGuru rebuts:

Yeah..not bad…but not feasible either! Especially, this part: “Chances are, less than a year later, you could sell your $6250 car for about what you paid for it.”

Check out GolbGuru’s numbers here.