[jmathai]

Dave Ramsey.

Listen to his podcast episodes. It’s a quick way to get a feel for his advice and to hear how real people who call in benefit from it. Go back to 2020 or so before his co-hosts started taking more airtime.

He catches a lot of flak because the debt snowball that he advocates is mathematically inefficient (folks prefer to pay debts with the highest interest rates off first). Also his political views. Look past those things - there is so much valuable advice.

[lowercased]

There's much valuable advice - sort of.

20+ years ago, he was one of a handful of well-known faces of personal finance, was nationally syndicated, books, etc. There were fewer outlets and fewer options than there are today.

His focus on debt and changing mindset around that will help some people, but if he's a turnoff (for whatever reason), you'll get 99% the same advice on most issues from dozens/hundreds of other personalities.

[tjansen]

Yes, was about to suggest Ramsey as well. His advice is quite repetitive (baby-steps..), but that's kind of the point: there are some easy rules that you will learn by heart if you listen to Ramsey for a few months. I live in Europe and half of what he says doesn't even apply to me, and yet I still think about them every time I consider a financial transaction. "Can I buy this car? - no, it's over 10% of my household income".

[ninethirty]

He's a real estate millionaire that has moral issues with declaring bankruptcy. Real estate is like life's cheat code: borrow money from the bank -- buy rental property -- pay the bank back with someone else's money. All this "get a second job"/"deliver pizzas" advice is disingenuous in my opinion when the real secret is borrow money and become part of the landed class.

[jmathai]

He personally likes real estate but his advice is mostly to get into mutual funds (swap with ETFs if you prefer).

He strongly advocates against taking debt to buy real estate. He only recommends purchasing real estate in cash.

The recommendation to get a second job only applies as people are getting out of debt (baby steps 1 and 2). After that he doesn’t really recommend it.

[eppp]

He gets a lot of flack because he is unhinged, waving guns around in the office and checking on his employees sexual relationships.