I did a lot of bitching about Dave Ramsey and all the little things I didn’t like about his talks during the 13 weeks I was in his personal finance class called Financial Peace University, most of which was focused on his latent sexism or the over-emphasis he had on financial security (using only proverbs to back up many of his points).
But the last few videos were much better on the negative woman references, and the last video was mostly a sermon about why giving money away is really important, so I feel like he somewhat redeemed himself against my criticism.
All that being said, I really liked the outcome of the class in terms of the fairly easy ways he laid out for us to track and manage cash-flow.
This has really played out in the last few weeks. I thought we were going to pay taxes because of the way some gifts from my in-laws to help with our house payment have been accounted for, but instead we got a very size-able return both from the federal government and state. And then, today the profit-sharing check from my company kicked in. (I guess working almost every Saturday in the fist quarter pays off for the business)
Normally this money would have been blown on eating out, some toys, and some charity stuff. And then we would have been looking around a few weeks later wondering where the money went.
But this time, we have a great plan in place so when unexpected money comes in we have good places to put it, which include those things above, as well as paying off some debt faster, and there is no way to be left wondering where the money went in a month or so.
I really like that this class worked that out well, because this ‘knowing where our money goes’ thing really helps my wife’s sanity, and I figured out I get more toys, and give away more money faster because of it.