Roxanne is an assistant principal at a public school, and has “a lot” of student loans. Ramsey is in a mellow mood today, which is good, because Roxanne’s question will turn out to be a whopper. On a recent Thursday, Roxanne in Tampa calls for advice on her situation. Then he sits at his desk, waits for the phone to ring, and spends the next three hours as an air traffic controller for America’s collective financial anxiety. In the afternoon, shortly before his show goes live, he and some staffers gather for a prayer. He spends most mornings at his 47-acre corporate headquarters outside Nashville, managing his media empire, Ramsey Solutions, which employs 900 people. Ramsey, who recently celebrated his 60th birthday by skydiving, is short and bald, not unhandsome, with a trim beard closer to white than grey. Don’t steal and expect to get promoted.”Īnd God help you if you’re waiting for the government to rescue you. “If you come to work late and they are paying you, then you are stealing. “If you’re working on paying off debt, the only time you should see the inside of a restaurant is if you’re working there.” On Twitter, he dispenses tough-love commandments: The only way to escape its crushing weight is to stop enabling yourself and go cold turkey: live on rice and beans, get a second job, sell your money-sucking car. The average American owes $6,194 in credit card debt, and Americans owe a collective $1.6tn in student loans.Īs Ramsey sees it, America’s debt crisis is an epidemic akin to drug addiction, and its roots lie in individual behavior. Of that, $372bn is at least 90 days late and considered seriously delinquent. Americans currently owe more than $14tn in consumer debt. His audience is likely to grow even further in future years. His seven-step program is taught widely at churches, schools, corporations and military bases. Critics argue that his worldview ignores the structural economic reasons so many Americans are in debt, such as higher education and healthcare costs, and encourages them to view indebtedness as a personal failing.īut if his fans are to be believed, Ramsey has saved their lives, helping them to pull themselves, bootstrap by bootstrap, out of indebtedness and poverty. Ramsey has been described as the “financial whisperer to Trump’s America”, an interlocutor for struggling people forgotten by coastal corridors of power. Unsurprisingly, his following includes a growing number of debt-burdened millennials. It is the third biggest talk radio program in the country, after only Rush Limbaugh’s and Sean Hannity’s. Three hours a day, five times a week, 16 million people tune into the Dave Ramsey Show, Ramsey’s decades-running radio program, for his financial counsel. The day you take scissors to your credit cards is the beginning of your financial salvation. Ramsey believes that as long as you have one red cent of debt – credit card debt, student loans, car payments, mortgages, medical bills – you can never be free.
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