I’ve seen clip of that financial advice show “The Ramsey show” on YouTube and the things that old man say are shocking to me. According to him I shouldn’t give a single cent to my parents… That’s so against my culture. I would be seen as downright evil if I do that.
Hell I’m unemployed for like a year by now and still sent 200 euro a few months ago to my father that still lives in my home country that I haven’t seen in 17 years.
Are you really Americans like that? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see it as cold hearted but I see it as unnatural, and I’M a “socialess” cold person in essence.
You have to realize American culture and society is one based on greed and selfishness. We’re bombarded with the philosophy that we should all be Rugged Individualists, or Got Mine, F@#k You. The Powers That Be think everything is transactional, and everything should have a monetary cost. Selfishness is a virtue, kindness is weakness, and empathy is for women and the weak. So, dump grandma in a nursing home with employees being paid $10 an hour, and go live your best life! YOLO!
That said, not all Americans are this, or believe these things, at least no consciously. But it’s all pervading in our culture.
There’s no one right answer. It totally depends on you, your parents, and your dynamic. Did/do your parents treat you like shit? Did they blow through their all of their retirement money in 5 years? Are they in a 800k empty house but refuse to downsize for no good reason?
It really should be contextual. Every family is different, and each familial relationship is different.
I’ve heard him say children don’t owe their parents money just because they’re their parents, and I’d agree with that statement. The parents are the ones who decide to have the baby, how to raise them, etc, so i think it’s wrong if parents think they’re entitled to their children’s money.
But that doesn’t mean a child should never help their parents out financially. Morally, if you love your parents and can swing it, I think the right thing to do is help your parents if they need it. But there’s a big difference between asking a child to help and feeling entitled to a child’s help.
No most Americans do end up supporting their parents. On the other hand, I think most Americans would agree that their parents don’t deserve financial support merely for being their parents. You support your family because you like them and not because it’s a requirement.
Also, I think a lot of younger people begrudge their parents for not handling their own financials better, especially as the younger generations see how much harder some things are than they used to be.
For example, my in-laws collectively make over 6 figures and inherited a house decades ago that’s worth almost a million dollars due to housing inflation. They absolutely could have a reasonable retirement plan, but they don’t. They spend money as fast as they get it and won’t be passing their house down like their parents did because they have multiple large loans against the house. They use this money to go on vacations every other month and own more vehicles than they really need. They also mentioned to me recently that they would like it if we could try to buy a house with extra rooms for when they get old and need to be taken care of.
I’m not going to let my wife’s parents be homeless when they inevitably can’t work, but I do find it somewhat infuriating that their lack of planning is going to cost me potentially a huge amount of money.
Last, just to add more confusion to this, there are a number of US states which have familial responsibility laws. These laws mean that you can be found legally liable for certain debts accumulated by your parents. This is the exception rather than the norm but it does demonstrate that Americans aren’t actually as independent as they would have you believe.
Dave Ramsey is typical right-wing evangelical cult leader, but instead of dipping directly into religion, he is a conservative financial coach. He’s the human manifestation of “stop eating avocado toast” and “get a third job.” He has fired employees for being gay, being pregnant, being non-Christian, and for having premarital sex. He forced his employees to remain in office during the pandemic.
So it should be no surprise that his advice involves becoming a selfish, heartless jackass. He wants his working class followers to be good boot lickers who are self-sufficient and satisfied with their economic ceiling, and not believe in the potential for progress that would benefit society but may be detrimental to grifters like himself. That means his followers need every one of their hard-earned pennies to pay their bills and grow their nest egg, rather than waste any bits on generosity or compassion.
TLDR: If you’re poor and you support mom, you might become too poor to perceive success from Ramsey’s advice. That’s what it comes down to. Fuck him.
Dave Ramsey is typical right-wing evangelical cult leader, but instead of dipping directly into religion, he is a conservative financial coach.
I searched for him on the youtube app and got Matt Walsh “What is a woman?” adverts, which really says everything one needs to know about the guy.
That said: Should you pay off debt? Yes, absolutely. Is debt the devil and you should destroy all your credit cards and never take loans ever like Ramsey advises? lmao no.
Middle, upper-middle, and upper class=wealth flows down.
If you’re poor, and sometimes just not white, wealth flows where it’s needed. Coworkers were very confused why I’m trying to save money to help my parents – who do and have always rented – when they’re too old to work.
Like they literally struggled to wrap their minds around the idea that a) not only can my parents not afford to retire, b) they can’t afford care when they can no longer work, c) they currently take care of my grandma who is in that position right now, d) I don’t, haven’t, and won’t be receiving some sort of windfall in the form of property or money when they die, e) the best off of me and my siblings are who tries to help out financially for the siblings that are having tougher times, not our parents.
They looked at me like I had grown a second head, but I work around almost exclusively upper middle class white people.
Australian millennial here: most parents are richer than us and will continue to be until they pass
Don’t listen to that right-wing idiot Dave Ramsey. He says stupid shit all the time, like never ever go into debt for anything ever, which is just unrealistic.
For example, according to him it’s preferable for you to get a 500$ clunker that you will undoubtedly have to continuously repair over a reasonably priced reliable used car that you take a small loan out for. There’s a middle ground with debt, even credit cards.
People should learn how to assess whether they can afford a debt or not. The math is not intuitive and requires prepwork that most aren’t willing to do.
I think I have an interesting perspective here, as someone who did kinda get their finances under control thanks to a Dave Ramsey course, and later had the unpleasant experience of discovering how much of a right-wing idiot he is during COVID.
Something I’ve noticed is that a lot of his advice seems targeted towards people who are crushingly bad at navigating debt. One of the most viral things they do is called “the debt free scream”, where people share their stories on his radio show after getting debt free, and just… do a victory scream, essentially. Kinda fun, not really a bad thing, but it shows how most of the people he deals with directly and the ones that make the best marketing are people with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of debt despite making very average money. Just absolutely no self-preservation instinct around available credit.
And for these people I think his advice makes sense. Absolutely no debt, debt is the enemy, it will crush you. And stuff like how he pushes you to chase paying debt with high intensity, get multiple jobs, etc. Because otherwise it’s impossible to even manage to put money on the principle of a debt that large.
For the average person though? His best advice is basic budgeting, focusing on paying your debts one by one so you can celebrate each victory quickly, and building an emergency fund so you don’t need to go backwards as soon as you have a car problem. Also, yeah, ditch the brand new truck, it’s burying you in debt you didn’t need.
But absolutely, I’d highly recommend modifying his recommendations for most people, and I don’t doubt someone out there is doing a better job of teaching this stuff than Ramsey is. My advised tweaks:
- Find a budget you can live with, paying your debts a couple months faster isn’t worth being miserable, and makes it more likely you’ll be able to stick to a budget for as long as it takes.
- Zero-based budgeting (budgeting every dollar at the start of the month) isn’t really necessary, leaving a little loose change that you can allocate later once the month is actually happening is pretty helpful. It’s ok to shift things around so long as you aren’t spending money you don’t have.
- Actually do keep “fun money” or “restaurant money”, so long as you’re capable of including it in the budget without hamstringing your ability to pay debt. If you’re giving more to debt than these things, then you’re probably fine.
- Ultimately just… think for yourself, and make your own decisions, based on your own income and expenses. Ramsey is a decent, if aggressive, starting point (and again, not the best person, he seems to have lost the plot somewhere).
I think one of his worst pieces of advice is to pay off debts before saving for an emergency fund (if I remember correctly)
Saving some kind of emergency fund first is more important than not having any debts. Having money on hand is worldly power in your hand basically. If you’re debt free but broke, then you can’t deal with an emergency that requires money.
Ah, he recommends saving 1000$, then tackling your debt, then building to 3-6 months expenses. Which is… fine, I agree with the principle of it, but that number is definitely one of those things I’d consider being more flexible with. The amount I think you should save before tackling your debts depends on a lot of factors.
I also don’t necessarily agree with saving that amount in two blocks, we personally saved 1000$, paid the most pressing card off, and then saved another 1000$. I think it makes sense to adjust that minimum emergency fund number as your situation evolves.
Just another case where I find he works fine as a starting point, but where most people shouldn’t follow his advice to the letter.
I think you give a fair explanation of Dave in this comment. I definitely think much of his “baby steps” needs to be updated. Just for example, $1000 in savings is just going to cause someone to get further into debt when an emergency comes up.
I like the 20/30/50 rule for budgeting (20% saving, 30% fun and 50% needs). If you have bad debt (consumer debt, bad auto loan, etc), then minimize your fun spending the most you can in order to wipe out that bad debt as quickly as possible. But of course also save up at least on month of needs or your largest deductible (whichever is greater). Then once the bad debt is gone save up a 3-6 month emergency fund (according to your personal risk/comfort level).
I also think it’s important to not be too hard on yourself. Some months you’ll be over budget and some months you will be under. That’s why I think it’s important, like you said, to leave some room in the budget and not get caught up in zero dollar budgeting.
Mmm, excellent addendum to my proposed changes. 1000$ is better than nothing, but it hasn’t really kept up with inflation, and circumstances really change things. For example, if you have a house, the potential opportunity and cost of an “emergency” goes up immensely.
But yeah, for us personally we pretty quickly went up to a 2000$ emergency fund, despite the relative stability of renting and driving a fairly new car. We’ll be working on our 3-6 month expense emergency fund soon. I definitely think it’s better to view the baby steps as flexible guidance on a starting point, rather than the concrete law they frame it as.
Congrats on making it that far! I’m sure you’ll have a fully funded emergency fund before you know it. I hope no emergencies come up while you build it, but if they do, don’t let that discourage you!
I’m not sure they need updating as much as there needs to be a second set for the absurdly in debt. The steps as written work well for 2-3 years at most, which if you follow them can pay off around 50k+ in that timeframe. If you have so much debt that it would take 5-7 years or more of that level of intensity, it’s probably worth relaxing it a little to be debt free and taking 6-9 years. Anything forecasting longer than 10 years to get debt free probably requires going back to an even more intense effort to escape debt.
The best analysis I have to Dave Ramsey’s advice to debt is like talking to an alcoholic about alcohol. If you have known issues dealing with debt, especially credit card debt, his advice will probably prevent some serious harm. However, for someone starting to deal with finances, it may not be the best advice.
Not going into debt is almost always the right choice though. Especially for cars. It’s not about driving a $500 car forever, 6 months of average car payments saved and a $500 car can become a $2500 car, six months to a year later it can be a $4500-$7000 car.
Assuming that a 500 dollar car won’t incur major expenses potentially exceeding its value within 6 months is a super risky bet.
If it survives a month you can buy another $500 clunker instead of losing the same to a new car loan, though they are far more rare these days (the example clunker typically now costs closer to $2-$4k now, or ~4 months of new car loan payments that you’d be stuck paying for 6 more years). The sweet spot is 10-15 year old cars under 200k miles and using small loans if you can’t pay cash. New cars are for idiots and the financially independent, but newer cars 5-10 years old can be worth the price/stress tradeoffs for some once you can afford one.
You’ll also get far more savings primarily riding a bike (and ebikes make this far easier once you can afford one) since most of your trips are likely under 5 miles, and your old car will last a lot longer for when you really need it. You might even find you can get by without owning a car.
It’s really not a $500 car is pretty much always worth $500.
It depends. My mom wanted to break even when she died. Not leave us money, and not cost us money, but did rely on my sister to help out, not financially much but with some care. I sent maybe $500 total towards that, so pretty close to what she wanted.
Husband’s parents are loaded, but if his mom needed care I’d help because she has been so nice to me, I was not close with my mom but have been lucky in mothers in law. I don’t expect anything from them, think their plan is to skip us and leave some to the grandkids, but in any case they are rich-ish and do not expect anything in the way of financial help.
I took time off to raise my kids, so don’t expect to retire but no, I would hope to not need financial help and don’t expect it from them. It’s a win if they don’t need any financial help from me!
In your case, if your parents sacrificed their future income to raise you, I understand why you feel you owe them, but I don’t really think that way, you don’t accrue debt for being raised. It’s more like whoever ends up best off helps the others, so my most successful daughter wants to be “the rich uncle” who can do that, she helps out her sisters, and my hope is like my mom’s - to not burden them and to die with close to nothing.
Americans are not a monolith, but instead all over the place with regard to a cultural practice like care for the elderly. If you had to summarize it might be fair to say that there is more of a sense of freedom from obligation to care for elders than in some other places, which is also driven by the baby boomer generation being so entitled and the current younger generations encountering ever worsening economic prospects which the boomers are stereotypically blind and unsympathetic towards. Also, there is a greater recognition of abuse and sometimes that leads to the recognition that ones elders have been abusive and therefore can go fuck themselves.
You are basing so much on a YouTube video.
Jeez this is a good reminder of how people get influenced by media.
Finance Bros are not normal people. They tend to be pretty sociopathic.
The main thing rubbing me wrong is forcing to support the parents - parents decide to have a child, so they do owe the child support during its live. The child didn’t have a choice in this, and therefore owes the parents nothing. Now if the parents were decent people there’s a high chance the kids want to help out because of that - and that’s a perfectly good thing to do. But there should not be a forced obligation by society.
We’re social animals, we depend on others if we’re young, old, sick, or disabled. I don’t think it should be a legal requirement, but if people see you let your parents suffer, they probably won’t have a great opinion of you.
People often make bad judgments based on incomplete information. As you know, it’s a sad fact that some parents do horrible things to their children. If those children leave, never come back, and never send money, good.
That’s why it shouldn’t be a legal requirement. If people hear that your parents mistreated you and still think poorly of you, that’s a person you don’t want in your life.
In America, the older folks tend to have more money than the younger folks. So culturally speaking, we don’t really think to send money to our elders.
The first way is pensions used to be common, so older folks get that. There are also retirement accounts that people would pay into their whole working life. (These are very commonly offered and are pretty set and forget.) Cost of living used to be a lot lower too, so they also had greater opportunity to save up as they aged.
Another way is that established people tend not to have to spend as much money. If you live in your own house and have for a while, your home goods are typically handled and you only need to replenish as needed. (I’m talking things like furniture, small fixtures… Stuff that would be a pain to move or replace if you are not as established.)
Also in the United States, current working age people pay into social security, which older folks can draw from. (There are rules and exceptions, but for the most part, this is how it works.)
So here, the older folks are in a better financial position overall. (There are of course exceptions, and with their advanced age it is harder to dig themselves out.
For myself, I am doing well. But even though I’m ahead of many of my peers, I’m still not doing as well as my parents when they were my age. The cost of my schooling was much higher than that of someone that graduated 30, 20, even 10 years before me. (But it did allow me to get a very good job.) The cost of living rose quite a bit higher than wages, so I wasn’t able to save and invest like they did. I’ve had to take on second jobs to pay for healthcare. (My parents did not have to.)
I might be a bit biased though, because I was also told I would get no financial help from my parents after I became an adult. I would be far more inclined to help if they invested in my education, which would have made me be way more far ahead financially.
However, I do help my mom when I can. I visit. I help her fix things. I don’t help her financially though.
I’m much better off financially than my mom ever was, and my grandma even though she did pretty good when she was working was on disability for the last 20 years of her life fighting renal failure and after paying her bills had a couple pennies to rub together each month.
My grandma couldn’t do much the last few years and didn’t really need money, so I put quite a bit into fixing up her house and making her home dialysis situation as comfortable as I could. New floors, fancy chair, big TV, I even redid her whole lasndscaping outside even though she never really got to enjoy it, she felt better knowing it looked nice.
My mom on the other hand gets about $300-400 on a normal from me for random things for her and my sister, going out to eat, clothes, nails, extra food. Which is essentially the only thing that let’s them live a live outside of total poverty. They live in the projects but they can buy things when they want or don’t have to worry about how they’re gonna get their next meal.
My whole life plan revolves around getting enough land to put a second modest home on for my mom. I’m almost there, which if that wasn’t the case I can say with certainty she’d die in those projects and not from old age.
I’ve never really thought about not taking care of my elders. I guess my situation is one of those exceptions.
Hey good for you for taking care of them. There’s nothing wrong with helping out if you’re able and willing.
Completely depends on if your parents are in your life, if they’re good people and treat you with love and respect.
Also depends on your parents financial status, as well as your financial status.
Most people my age (Millenial) are not as well off as our parents so it wouldn’t make sense to support them.
There is no single answer to your question other than “it depends”
