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The truth about Dave Ramsey is I wish I had known about him sooner. It's very sad that through 12 years of public school and 4 years of college, I graduated knowing practically nothing about personal finance. A lot of people my age have grown up in the same situation. If you don't learn what you need financially from school or from someone in your family, you can make a lot of mistakes just from sheer ignorance. It can happen to people at all intelligence levels.

Probably the coolest thing about what Dave has done is he stepped up and took a really bad situation (a bankruptcy of his own earlier in life) and turned it around into a way to help other people. I have a lot of respect for him because of that, as do 3 million+ people in the U.S. who listen to him as of this article. He teaches solid principles that have been around for a very long time but aren't always considered "commonsense" anymore.

My generation needs a lot of help especially. The whole underlying message I was given through public school and college is "borrow your way to success." When you put it that way, it sounds ridiculous. Why then are we as a society having so many money problems? As a whole, we borrow too much compared to our incomes and don't save money. Long-term, that ruins your finances.

In time my husband and I have been taking Dave's advice, our debt has been cut by half and our income has nearly doubled. We're going to be debt-free by the time I'm 25 and then be able to save up a large down payment for a house. As far as his financial plan itself, it definitely works. Listening to the radio show on Fridays is evidence of that as family after family calls in debt-free.

This didn't all happen for people overnight, but the right advice, hard work, and delaying gratification can turn any normal person's finances around. Dave is one of a few people in society who isn't afraid to tell people what they need to hear, even if it's not how most people think. The reason people get trapped in these paycheck-to-paycheck cycles is they gradually leverage themselves in debt until they barely have any room to change anything. While it's not impossible, it does take focus and a good plan.

Just being debt-free and having $10,000 in the bank makes a person strange in our country from a statistics standpoint. Personally, I think strange is good in this case. The lifestyle you can have when you're out of consumer debt is incredible. You see it in any family you've ever met that's debt-free at a young age. In the long run, they have more time and money than someone who's borrowed their whole lives.

I also think it's in having your personal freedom that puts people in a position to be wealthy. We all have a lot of great ideas we can do if we just had a good financial foundation to handle it. The mental energy a person uses trying to stay afloat with debt is the same mental energy that can make them millionaires if they're willing to delay gratification for a short period of time.

For us, Dave Ramsey's advice has literally changed the course of our lives. Finances are important, and if you're willing to do the work and listen to the right people they can be turned for the better.

Learn more about this author, Patricia Gilliam.
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