Quote:
Originally Posted by mswlogo
Exactly. Stay within your means and leverage the tools available.
What ever you do, don’t leave all your money in cash or you’ll find yourself way behind.
I’ve done many mortgages over the years but they were all paid off by around age 50.
I certainly respect anyone staying within their means through a “cash” life style.
I have no problem with a credit card. But we always limited ourselves to ONE credit card.
I also don’t believe in taking out larger mortgages so you can invest more. I think a balance is best. Most of our mortgages were low number of years and we avoided 30 year ones (if we could).
BTW watch out for inflation. Inflation is your friend if you have high debt.
|
Keep in mind though that Dave Ramsey is targeting people who are financially inept or undisciplined. The majority of people out there are - few actually admit to it. Debt can be OK to leverage sometimes, but it's not always about cash flow - today you may be fine but at any time that can dry up or change radically. Recent events can illustrate that when a virus comes along and the economy is literally shut down for a couple of months. Who saw that coming? Both businesses and individuals took a massive hit, question is how many are prepared to weather a storm like that? Even if you had a warning of a month, 6 months or a year to prepare. If all your inflow is already spoken for to service debt you're screwed.
The other thing that Ramsey rightly pushes is savings - something that shockingly few do. You don't have to be rich to put some money away but you have to be disciplined. How many are truly prepared for retirement and have a nest egg of substantial value to live off of. I can tell you in my age group (40s) most of my peers have little or nothing. That is scary. Oh they have all the stuff, all on perpetual payment plans that have no end and these folks are living paycheck to pay check wedged to 100% on the payments of all that stuff they really don't own and paying a premium to do so.
Conceptually I like what he teaches and have put to use some of his ideas however every situation is different and as such each and every individual requires a financial plan tailored to their specific situation with an emphasis on saving for the future and unforeseen life events that do happen.