Influence U

I haven’t had an Influence U post in a long time.. but here is one.  Dave Ramsey.  I’m sure there are thousands of articles about Dave Ramsey.  He has a massive following.   In short he’s a big deal.  If, on the off chance you don’t know who he is.. Dave Ramsey is a financial self-help guru whose focus is primarily on issues related to debt and money.  He is an unabashed Christian and promotes his Christianity in everything he does.

I think that’s one of the reasons he has always been on the cusp of true mass-popularity but hasn’t achieved household name recognition status.  He has grown his empire from a single radio talk show to to massive publishing empire and live events events.  He has written multiple successful books, but that’s not why he’s in this post.  

I was a complete financial idiot in my 20’s

Why is Dave such a big influence to me?  Well, as the kids type, TBH, (to be honest if your not into smartphone lingo) I was a complete financial idiot in my 20’s.. As Dave says, I was trying to out earn my stupidity. I Lived the life of the work hard play hard, only for me it was work hard, buy hard.  – I was never much of a partier.  I wasn’t married, I didn’t earn that much but was always just one commission check away from getting back to ‘where I need to be’.   It was only after marrying my best forever friend and finding Dave that the two influences worked together to help me find the self discipline to get out of debt and stay out of debt.  Even today I have a envelope with cash in it that i’m using to save for my next car so I don’t have to have car payments.

I think Dave’s rise to prominence exists as sort of a counter to the things the Professional Individual Contributor population, and really everyone at every level, must deal with in our society.  That is an environment where  the organizations that sell debt as a business have become tremendously sophisticated and consequently hugely successful.  Our culture surrounds us with this idea that Debt is good.  Student Loan debt, mortgage debt, car payments.. But the reality is that our employers and our world is not build around the stability needed to make these regular payments.  And so the burden of maintaining a slush fund, a cushion, the thing to keep us out of trouble falls on us. Yet their is an ever present push culturally to acquire these things that usually require payments regular.  It’s really a alternative way of thinking to say I will own everything and have no debt, and if you do it.. Like dave often says, you are ‘weird’ – which of course he strongly encourages.     The big benefit is that  if you don’t have payments that’s one less stress in your life when you are next right sized.  

This is just my two cents.. which is two more than I had when I was in my 20’s and earning twice the average annual household income in America.  

Influence U –  Influence U discusses the things that inspire us to say “I can make that” or “I need to do that”.    These are the things that influences me, and hopefully they will empower you dear reader to seek out the things that Influence U.