How Much Do You think You Need to Retire? What Age Will You/Spouse Retire? Investment and General Retirement Issues (Part 3)

thanks!

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It’s not about Ramsey’s advice (though he used to weave in religious stuff with his advice, IIRC, which was uncomfortable to me). I find him creepy. As for Thomas Stanley, I’ve written in detail about his awful, untimely death, as I know his daughter (and she was writing a book with him when he died) and it happened not far from where we live. Stanley talked practically, without religious overtones.

Here’s an old thread about him:

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Yeah, I always glossed over his religious lectures. So many people are either not religious, or not of his faith, and they don’t need those lectures along with financial advice. If I was a betting gal, I’d wager that most of us have paid a far higher percentage of our income in taxes than someone who is a real estate investor and entrepreneur. That’s just how our tax system works, and percentage wise, I’d guess that the extra (tax deductible, no doubt) 10% that he tithes still doesn’t make up the difference that the average working person pays in taxes more than he does.

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RIP the chocolate wafers. I’ve been using chocolate Teddy Grahams in recipes instead for a few years. While not a direct substitute, they work pretty well and aren’t hard to find.

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Interestingly my friends who benefitted from Dave Ramsey advise 20+ years ago are atheists (they point out that they are atheists, not agnostics). I think they just took the useful suggestions and ignored the religious vibe.

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Darn - I was all excited and hoping you were going to tell me where I could get them. We used to have this wonderful refrigerator thing with those, whipped cream, and maybe some nuts. Brings back fond memories.

I have tried Dewey’s wafer cookies. They are pretty ok but thin and hard to make the refrigerator cake with. As for Ramsey, he also probably (for me) got hit with a bit of guilt by association because his show was on right before or after (can’t recall) Dr. Laura and she was absolutely horrid and not trained in the field she was blathering on about, and was awful to people in distress.

And one last thing about Ramsey- I have relatives for whom any financial advice would have been helpful. But they wouldn’t listen. Especially from an evangelical.

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I didn’t realize Thomas Stanley’s daughter did finish the joint venture book (in 2020 it was published) “The Next Millionaire Next Door
Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth”. Saw it when I looked up his info on Wikipedia. Also intrigued by “The Millionaire Mind” (one of my degrees is in psychology).

To quote about “The National Study of Millionaires” - “a research study conducted by Ramsey Solutions with over 10,000 US millionaires to gain an understanding of personal finance behaviors and attitudes that factored into their financial success. The nationally representative sample was fielded Nov 17, 2017 - Jan31, 2018, using a third-party research panel and our Ramsey Solutions research panel. It is the largest, most statistically significant research project of its kind ever conducted.”

The study also showed 88% of millionaires graduated from college (compared to 38% of the general population), and over half, 52% earned a master’s or doctoral degree, compared to 13% of the general population. Almost two-thirds of millionaires, 62% graduated from public state schools, while only 8% went to a prestigious private school.

I don’t think it hurts anyone’s feeling (including DR) about who doesn’t like him or who doesn’t like his advice. But millions of people IMHO have benefited by following the baby steps in getting out of debt and building wealth.

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She did finish, but initially was writing it with her dad when killed by the drunk driver.

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Let’s move on from talking about Ramsey, @SOSconcern. I find him just icky/creepy and I am apparently not alone. JMO.

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I think the talk about the millionaire study was worthwhile but will stop on DR.

My very quick search indicates 8,000 of the 10,000 in the survey were Ramsey-followers, so I don’t see that as an unbiased study. “It is the largest, most statistically significant project of its kind ever conducted” might my a little hyperbolic :).
To quote the AI summary “The study’s validity is a topic of ongoing debate.”

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Keeping debt to a minimum is a wise choice, and pretty much any financial advice includes that gem. I know that very wealthy people leverage debt, because they often make more on their money than the interest they pay to borrow. But the vast majority of us are not in that position. Living within one’s means is good advice for the masses. How much we need to be able to live as we want really comes down to (1) determining how much we need for basic living expenses (necessities), (2) determining how much we want to spend to upgrade our living and/or for non-necessities, and (3) adding those amounts together. If we don’t have enough (3) to cover the costs, we need to decide where we can trim (2). If we get rid of (2) entirely and still don’t have enough, we need to redefine necessities so that we can cover them (perhaps a smaller house, a lower cost area, etc) or get a job (lots of folks have to do that). It’s math.

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They may or may not have achieved millionaire status with or w/o DR.

Thomas Stanley is not around to comment or provide data. His books are interesting reads - even with the gap in time from when they were published. Some truths continue to be truths.

My point is, if 8,000 of the 10,000 in the study you linked and provided other comments on were Dave Ramsey followers, I don’t see that as an unbiased study. A quick google search indicated there are many who question the study and its results.
My comments had nothing to do with Thomas Stanley.

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I was just looking at chapter 8 in “Stop Acting Rich” - it was about attending the annual neighbor cocktail party about a month after moving into the home Thomas Stanley and his wife had built. One woman asked him the question “How can you, Dr. Stanley, a professor, live in this neighborhood?” Interesting read.

Having low debt feels good. We once had free FA consultation through a work perk. He said with the current interest rate it made sense to not pay down our mortgage. BUT he did say that his top 10 net worth customers all had paid-off homes. (We eventually did pay ours off a little early, but not til the kids were through college and we were preparing for retirement.)

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We live in a relatively high tax state and even if we paid off our mortgage tomorrow, we would still have to pay about 65% what we are paying now (for property taxes and insurance).

I think it probably makes a lot more sense to pay off a mortgage if the payment is mostly P&I rather than fixed costs that will only go up.

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I’d love to see a list of the richest women who did not achieve wealth through birth or marriage!

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