Dave Ramsey

If you're looking for good, sound financial advice, but you can't afford a personal financial planner or are not interested in using one, where do you turn? The Internet offers a wealth of information about personal finance but you have to be careful whose advice you listen to. It's sometimes difficult to know if the advice is legitimate, since anybody can publish articles online.

Determining if a person is providing sound financial advice is not always easy to do and can be very time consuming. In order to make a recommendation, I've checked out several leading personal finance experts by listening extensively to their radio or television programs and reading some of their books over a period of months or several years. So far, the two experts I recommend are Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey. That doesn't mean I agree with every piece of advice they give, but it does mean that I believe they give good, sound, practical money advice for the average person.

For what I have to say about Suze Orman, see Suze Orman: One of America's Best Personal Finance Experts.

So, who is Dave Ramsey? Dave appears on radio stations all over the country every week day, taking calls from listeners and dispensing financial advice. He's the author of:

• "The Total Money Makeover"
• "The Money Answer Book"
• "Financial Peace Revisited"
• "More Than Enough"

Dave Ramsey talks extensively about "The Baby Steps," the first steps anybody who is in debt and wants to get out should take to get started. The baby steps are:

• $1,000 in the bank to start an emergency fund
• Pay off all debt using the "Debt Snowball"
• Have three to six months of expenses in savings
• Invest 15 percent of your household income in Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement accounts
• Fund your kids' college educations
• Pay off the mortgage on your home early
• Build wealth, give to others, and invest in mutual funds and real estate

Dave's Financial Peace University, a Total Money Makeover Program, is a 13-week video program that you watch with a group of other people at a location near you. Each class is approximately two hours, one hour of Dave Ramsey on video and one hour of small group discussions. The average number of students in the class is 12 to 24 people. Topics covered include:

• The importance of saving money and how to get the best return.
• How to set up and manage a monthly budget.
• The importance of working together in relationships and how we handle money.
• Dave's techniques on how to negotiate the best deals when buying something.
• How to get out of debt and stay out of debt.
• An understanding of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, CDs, and annuities, and how to get the best return on your money.
• The different types of insurance you need.
• How to plan for retirement and your kids' college educations.
• How marketing affects the way we spend money and the key to developing power over our spending.
• The best way to buy and sell a house and the best ways to finance it.
• The importance of doing work that you love.
• How to check your credit report and clean it up and how to deal with collection agencies.

Class materials retail for $199 but are sometimes cheaper. As of Fall 2005, the price on the Dave Ramsey Web site is $139, which includes a workbook with 13 lessons, the 13 lessons on CDs, Dave's best-selling book "Financial Peace," materials for the envelope system of cash management (budgeting), budgeting forms, and a bonus CD. Once you buy the class materials, you can sign up online for a class near you. I have not attended a Financial Peace University class.

Dave has a no-nonsense approach to getting out of debt and staying out of debt, and his approach seems to motivate people not only to get started but to stick with it. To find a radio station near you that offers Dave's talk show, check out the Dave Ramsey Web site.