Dave Ramsey is a good entry point for people interested in taking control of their finances. He introduces us to dig deeper into the financial community. He provides a ton of content to give people motivation. I thank him for giving me motivation to stick through paying off my debts.
However, I think all of us here would agree that there are issues with much of the strategy that he preaches. We are on the Mustache forum after all! I think we'd all agree that the Mustache philosophy is much more logical and complete.
Dave preaches strategy that isn't mathematically logical, such as paying of the smallest debts first rather than the highest interest rate debts first. He rarely mentions that this strategy is based on behavioral finance rather than by math. He's not dumb for creating a strategy based on behavior but he does insist his audience to blindly follow his lead without questioning his tactics. As Mustachians' we naturally take a bit of offense to this and start to question all of his plan.
On top of that we are bothered by his overt pushing of Christianity and his repeating rants on the same topics over and over. His hatred for credit cards are based on one comment an AMEX credit card collector made to his wife, which made his wife question their relationship, so he now has a secret agenda to take away as much business from credit card companies as possible. Which he's doing an alright job there.
As Mustachians' are more objective financial thinkers we are bothered by this since we know that credit card rewards generate new money, a small source of income, from doing nothing more than what we are already doing. Not partaking in credit card rewards would be like not contributing to a 401k plan with match! My credit card gives double cash back (2%) if you put the proceeds into a retirement account. I often think how it's a legal loophole to get tax free credit card rewards and put them into a roth. The time value of money increases so much here with the tax free earnings. Do to higher than normal spending last year I generated $1,000 in rewards for my roth. After 20 of compounding, the rewards might make me rich (Dave Ramsey often says that rewards dollars will never make you rich. To this sentiment, I laugh in your face Dave).
Anyways I digress. Dave isn't all bad. He's the training wheels for the financial independence community. He will never evolve his beliefs to become better which may be the root of why he is so annoying to us. We strive to be better and more efficient.
