The "kill all the debt first" people will not be able to retire as early (or ever) IF they kill their debt at the expense of saving and investing. This is an important distinction. It's an advanced, but not really all that difficult concept, just like compound interest. If you don't embrace and understand how these things work, your odds of reaching the goal are not in your favor. Those of us who have learned this really want to help others get it, too. Ours is the less popular and less obvious position, yet we tenaciously hang around, trying to help others get there, too.
Diane C it is true that often your method yields better results. The issue I bring up deals with "tolerance" and respecting for different ideas and opinions from other forum members.
In the mustachian community there are universal bad traits that are always frowned upon such as borrowing money to buy a card or keeping high interest CC debt.
Once one gets to the point where their only debt remaining is the mortgage debt, the mustachians are basically split off into different directions. For example about 70% pay off the mortgage debt early and 30% keep it for as long as possible and invest to maximize their wealth (
http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/let%27s-settle-this-with-a-vote-invest-or-payoff-debts/).
This has nothing to do with Dave Ramsey. The issue is that this criticism from some with regards to keeping mortgage indicates a lack of tolerance for this other 70% that does things different than what you believe is the best way. When you give your recommendations to people who don't ask for it or want it, you are implying "I am better than you". This does nothing positive for the MMM community but just divides it further. You say it is help people, but it is helpful under your beliefs not necessary others. This approach does not convince the person to change, it only re-enforces their beliefs they already had. They will simply dig their heels in further and stop listening to you (if you don't believe me about this read Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people").
You have to please understand that people will go about getting to FI in different ways. In fact as the MMM group grows larger and larger, the diversity will only increase. If you go around telling people that they will never reach FI unless they do it your way, this sounds like absolutism, where you saying
"it is my way or no way". Clearly this is incorrect because the founder of MMM himself prefers to not carry mortgage debt (i.e. see
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/02/24/pay-down-the-mortgage-or-invest-more-a-winwin-question/ where he states
"But now I operate on an all-cash basis. I have no mortgage on my primary house, or the rental house, and I avoiding the temptation to borrow to expand my investments further ... My analytical side knows that I could make much more income through leverage, but sometimes you can afford the analytical side be damned. " )
With regards to which strategy is best:
He states
"deciding whether you should pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible, or pump your surplus cash into stocks and other investments ... But there is still some good news: it’s a win/win question since either of these strategies involve YOU putting away money in a productive place, which will tend to make you wealthier over time. The Mustachian Way is flexible enough that it will make us all rich relatively quickly, so there is no need to lock on to one particular strategy as The Only Way To Do It"I am with MMM on this one, and I like this as the best approach for mustachism in general. Forcing one way as the best way puts off future readers of MMM. If MMM himself is flexible enough or tolerant enough to accept this, why can you not accept it? I feel that as mustachians we should recognize universally bad decision and criticize them according i.e. borrowing money to buy a car or carrying balances on high interest CC debt. However, once you get to final road towards FI of building wealth (i.e. where the only remaining debt is the mortage), we need to back off a bit and let person choose the route they are most comfortable with and encourage them as they are instead of trying to change them.
The things you say about compound interest are absolutely true and right mathematically but real life is bit more complex that math alone. Thus, according to you where it does the criticism stop? Are you also going to criticize people who hold a different allocation of stocks to bonds as you do, or criticize them for having rentals over index funds or vice versa? For example, someone who holds 75% stocks and 25% bonds, history tells us that they are not going to benefit as much as someone with 100% stocks mathematically speaking. Are you going to demand that no one can be a so called "advanced" mustachian unless they hold 100% stocks from now on.
If future mustachians want to do it your way, they will either ask for the information directly or look it up since it is already pretty well documented at this point. In summary, that is the point I am trying to make here.