Dave Ramsey is a hack.
Yeah but what if the clock is broken so itâs like 15 minutes off all the time? Then itâs never right. The right twice a day is just big idiom propaganda
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.
Heâs right for most people first beginning to improve their financial health. He has probably gotten more people out of debt than any other âguruâ. If thatâs a hack, so be it, it works.
He once fired a pregnant employee because she wasnât married and therefore must have had premarital sex. Theyâve fired 9 people for pre marital sex. Wacky
Is he the idiot who demands you only pay for things in cash and store it in labeled envelopes?
Nah heâs alright. There is no nuance in his advice but for the majority of his listeners thatâs 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.
-
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.
-
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.
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 ÂŁ700 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 ÂŁ1000 a month for the privaledge.
Fucking scum.
Now if there were a /c/fuckinsurance - Iâd be all over that. I love my cars, I HATE insurance companies.
I love that I only have liability at $100k but my cost still goes up every year. My coverage is actually worth less to inflation and those crooks want more money? For what?
Per month?! Wtf are you driving? (Late 40s here, paying around ÂŁ400 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 ÂŁ400 is disgustingly over priced in my opinion though, the way this country does insurance is vile.
Australiaâs 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, thereâs 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. 120âŹ/month with partially comprehensive coverage (including obligatory liability insurance). These outrageous prices are definitely a US thing.
Iâm 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.
Theyâre not, theyâre complaining about the problems inherent to cars.
yeah of fucking course. you guys are forced to buy insurance in the US, they have a big juicy captive market.
Thereâs tons of car insurance companies. We can shop around. Most people donât, for some reason.
Insurance market is just another oligopoly⌠As with anything else they collude to fix prices. Sure you can lower rate of price gouging by switching every year but at the end of the day theybare still price gouging and there is nothing end user can do about it.
Parasites like warren buffet with geico bullshitâŚ
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, itâs over 2 mil.
And then you add the inflation and you actually just owe money. Got to get that third job at 65
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 âuninsured driver coverageâ. They said they couldnât cover it because until they had another driverâs information I was automatically at fault, even with the police report and witness accounts. They said it didnât count as uninsured driver because itâs 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 didnât 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%âŚ
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, itâs a surprise they couldnât find the car that drove into you. Decerning the colour, and style of car, surely itâd be only a handful of vehicles matching both the description and the numbers.
Iâm sorry that happened to you.
Do you have any recommendations for dash camera solutions like you mention? Iâve been telling myself I need to get a dash cam but every time I start researching what to buy I feel like the market is a sea of wanky information and itâs hard to tell what is crap and what is solid.
State Farm also screwed over a guy I know. He dumped their policy after they wouldnât 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 âcanât sue himselfâ 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 itâs okay? Like bro, thatâs 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.
Not a motorcycle, but my car was hit (along with several others) by a guy evading the police. I wasnât 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, âThere were 7 vehicles involved in this accident, and other vehicles were damaged much worse than yours, so weâre not sure if his policy will cover all of the damage⌠So weâll have to file the claim under your policy, youâd just have to pay your deductible.â
Absolutely not, I told her. âWell Sir, you have to unders-â
âNo, maâam, YOU need to understand that your customerâs 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.â 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, Iâll 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.
âOh, 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.â
Oh, cool, well, thatâs not what weâre 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, âWell, Sir, yâknow, typically the bank holding the lien wants to handle these things, and, yâknow, if the repairs arenât made and they repossess the vehicle, you could owe the repair costs.â
My response: âHuh, fascinating. Sounds like a conversation between my bank and I, and with all due respect, I donât understand who you are to have that discussion on their behalf.â
âJust cut him the check,â 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 dadâs car to drive while I looked for a replacement I could afford, and after a few weeks my insurance said âwe paid you the coverage. If you donât put a new car on your policy, weâll cancel it.â ok, fine. I put my old junker (car before the Rio) on it - wasnât even road worthy, but I had accident forgiveness on this policy and if I had to start over Iâd get higher premiums.
I found a car a week later. Called the broker to switch the policy.
'we canât remove this car from the policy unless we contact your bank first â
What.
They claimed because I had bought my Rio with a bank loan that they couldnât remove my junker without permission from the bank.
I argued with this person politely for 10 minutes, pointing out that Iâd paid the car off 2 years prior. They said âwell Iâll need to check with the underwriter then.â fine. I get a call back 30m later, same person. âno, we need permission from the bank according to the underwriter.â
This pissed me off because I knew I was being lied to. âNow I know youâre 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.â
âwell sir, I need to confirm that with the bankâ
âIf 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.â
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.
hereâs 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 itâd 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 âhey get ready your policy will renew in 3 months, be sure to double check your payment methodâ 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, iâm pissed, so i call them to find out what the hell theyâre doing and why and they claimed itâs 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 donât recall getting a speeding ticket, and in any case, with a spotless driving record, youâd think thereâd be some kind of interfacing with me about it, but no. they claimed the ticket was real and iâd 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, iâm pissed now because itâs 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, nawâŚ
i still have the car, and itâs parked being unused. I swapped to riding bikes to and from work, sometimes an ebike, sometimes a fixie, and iâm the only cyclist on the road around here that Iâve ever seen and itâs sometimes really sketchy. but i plan to ride through the winter, dry or snowy, i donât care.
it can get complicated, because iâm 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 canât really do it collectively.
Iâm with you there.
Not too long ago, my company was informed by letter (as you should have been) of a price increase. I canât remember exactly, but I want to say it was a 600% increase on the companyâs rates. Thereâs 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 wouldnât matter theyâd 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 wasnât specifically for insurance reasons, but I got rid of my car after I noticed I wasnât driving very far. Now we have a couple cargo trailers and we do the shopping and the errands just as easily and weâre saving tens of thousands doing it. We go through the winter as well, itâs not for everyone but dress appropriately and have lights and youâll do great.
Iâve had great luck going through an insurance broker for my insurance. The broker can be a mediator should the insurance company engage in sketchy nonsense, and can get you into some cushy insurance companies than only do B2B and donât spend millions on consumer advertising. Plus brokers will know what insurance companies to go through for what buyers to likely get you the best rate
My job is shopping around for third party customer support vendors. One of their pitches I kept hearing was, âWe donât lie to you about times.â
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.
He plays a daddy capitalist on teevee while being total boomer.
Also his debt pay off advice is bad financial advice. âSnow ballâ method đ¤Ą
Entire grift is dunking on peasants and blame their personal failings for systemic issues.
Some of his advice (mainly the first âbaby stepsâ of paying off debts and getting some money saved) is reasonable enough. Snowball method of paying off debt may not be the most mathematically advantageous, but it does give psychological quick wins to those who may need it most. Paying off high-interest loans first doesnât mean much if you get frustrated and give up. Setting a budget is also important.
Once you get past that his advice is pretty awful though. Yes, I use credit cards but I pay it off. Yes, I have a car loan but its interest rate is so low I pay a rounding errorâs worth of interest through the life of the loan. No, Iâm not paying my mortgage off on a 15-year schedule because its interest rate is plenty low as well and Iâve got better things to do with my paycheck.
Snow ball methodâs great when youâre really up shitâs creek and arenât going to be done paying everything off anytime soon anyway.
By paying off the smaller loans first, your total minimum monthly payment is reduced quicker, leaving you better off psychologically because you finally have money to spend on food, but also you can then use the extra money every month to pay off the debts with worse interest rates.
Personally I wouldnât fully adhere his snowball method OR the optimal âhigh interest firstâ strategy. Iâd first identify the low hanging fruit and then look at the rest as a tradeoff between âhow quickly could I pay this offâ vs âhow much would not having this payment anymore improve my lifeâ vs âhow much is this going to fuck me in the ass with interest if I donât pay it off ahead of scheduleâ.
