Hey parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day presented by Pear Deck. Family fun, giveaways, and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your tickets now at lakings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little ones. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets.

I'm your host. Today's show, a little bit different, just a quick intro here. I am at FinCon 2014, actually podcasting or actually releasing this introduction right from the hallway, right between sessions. And I've just recorded this show that you will hear in just a moment, which is an interview with Steve Stewart.

And for a long time people have been asking me, I've made various comments about Dave Ramsey and I'm a fan of his, but I'm also not. And Steve and I decided to go ahead and sit down and do a show together. And Steve is a really a great guy.

He runs a show called Money Plan SOS. And he's a big fan of Dave Ramsey. He's a Dave Ramsey coach and big fan. Dave has had a great impact in his life. I've been a little bit fearful to do this content just because I want to be very careful.

I'm a big Dave fan, but I also want to have some things I would like to see done differently, which is why I'm doing my show in the first place. So I told Steve, I said, "Thankfully, since you're a big fan, maybe you can help me keep from destroying myself in the conversation." So you're about to hear a recorded conversation between Steve and myself.

I hope you enjoy it and I hope you find it thought provoking. I am probably more than any other show I've released. I'm nervous about releasing this one, but I feel like I've got to. So I hope you enjoy it and I would love your feedback. Here's the interview.

I'm sitting here with Joshua Sheets from Radical Personal Finance, one of my favorite new finance podcasts. Joshua Sheets, tell us a little bit about your podcast and what you're doing over there. I am trying to provide an alternative for existing financial broadcast radio. So when people are tired of the current options, then they have an option for maybe a slightly more in-depth level of financial radio.

That's basically my vision of what I'm looking to create. My audience is traditionally people who are just trying to get out of debt and we don't get too deep into the personal finance topics, but you have a history and you've got a whole bunch of letters behind your name.

Tell us a little bit about what those are. Not going into too much depth, but you've got a background. That's what I'm trying to get at. All that stuff means is I'm good at taking tests. That's basically all it is. But yes, I have been a professional financial advisor for the last six years.

And during that time, I've worked hard. I have a bunch of financial planning designations. Probably the, I think I counted the other day, I think it was seven at this point. But again, all it means is just I'm good at taking tests, but a CFP background. And then I actually just finished a master's degree in financial planning.

So I do have some history in the technical side of financial planning, as well as a history of actually working with clients, which probably is the biggest difference between me and many other people is when you work with clients. And I've worked with over a thousand people face to face over the last six years.

That makes a big difference in your perspective. You know, listening to your podcast, I can tell that you've got the knowledge behind it all. And the approach that I like, I like the approach that you have in your show because it does come off. You do give your opinion, but it is, it's not as if this is the way it works.

It is as if another option that will work for specific people. So I appreciate that aspect. Tell us a little bit why you do it that way. I am a recovering dogmatic, which is actually kind of the primary thing I know what we were going to talk about. But I spent years as a personal finance junkie, and I always loved finance.

I always loved reading the books. I love listening to the shows. I love listening to the radio. But what you pick up, whether it's you listen to whether it's, you know, AM political talk or whether it's you watch kind of the way media works, you pick up this mode of thinking of right and wrong, this idea that there is right and then there is wrong.

And I'm not talking about morality at this moment. That's a whole separate philosophical discussion. But especially with regard to money, we get these certain ideas that this is right and this is wrong. And I know that for me, that was a big thing because I fully adopted that approach and that idea that there are certain right ways to handle money or certain right financial decisions to make.

And then there are certain wrong ways to handle money and certain wrong financial decisions to make. And what I learned with actually practice, practice in the professional sense, meaning actually working with clients, is that it's simply not true. There are things that are technically correct, but many times a lot of it isn't subject to personal adaptation.

And that's the key point that is missing in financial talk radio. That's the key point that's missing in most personal finance books. And so that's what I determined to do is not to tell somebody what to think or what to do, but rather teach them everything I know and allow them to be adults.

What happens is we pick this up somehow, this idea that we have to tell each other how to live and tell each other what to do. And it's this very juvenile thing, I think, it's probably schooled into us where we're taught that there is right and there is wrong and there is a master at the front of the class and we're the slaves who have to regurgitate to the master the right answer to get the appropriate reward and avoid the punishment and avoid the penalty.

So our society, speaking of the US American society, gets more and more in this direction where we get into the idea of this is right and wrong in areas where there's just simply not right and wrong. It's simply not. And so it took years, literally I would say about three years of actually working as a financial advisor to where I finally discovered that I was an idiot and I'm taking this approach of telling clients this is what's right and finally I just learned to shut up and start listening.

And once I learned to shut up and start listening to people and then just simply started being more of a coach and teaching them the things that are technically accurate, it made a major difference in the results the clients achieved. Made a major difference. And there's more to it but that's why in my show I refuse to say this is what you should do with your life.

Rather I say you're an adult. Figure out what you want to do with your life. And I can destroy most of the things that people take for granted. I can destroy most of the purple cows. Maybe that's not the right word but there are certain things that people hold as the holy grail.

This is the way that things should be done. And I can destroy most of those and I've learned to do that over time. And so now because all the things that I used to think were right to do or not right to do, again I've learned that everything is not black and white.

And so that heavily influences my show. >> See I think for my show I do a lot of this is the way it works stuff but hopefully I educate my audience as well. Do you think that we as a culture think that maybe the answers are in a book and it really is a misconception?

There's really no way to learn everything in one book. Do you believe that? >> It's not so much about the book. All you get when you're reading a book is you're getting an author's perspective and you're getting a philosophy. And so I don't mind, for example, I don't mind having a book where someone is presenting a strong opinion.

But what happens is that there's almost many, especially in the financial world, there are certain things that go to another level and then we adapt this idea of this is right and this is wrong. I'll give you an example. Maybe this will help to clarify. Would you generally counsel people that it's a good idea to save money?

>> Yes. >> Okay. I would too. Okay. But can you also then concurrent with that thought hold on your other thought and design ideas and situations in which saving money is not a good thing? And here let me flesh this out so you understand. So there is only one reason in the world to save money because you value what that future savings means to you for your goals more than you value the consumption that you can have today.

So if I have $100 and I have a choice between spending the $100 and consuming it today versus saving the $100, the only rational reason for me to save the money is because I value what the future higher dollars would mean to me more than I value the consumption for $100 today.

So what happens in personal finance is that it's easy for us who are involved and really engaged in this to look down on people who are spending all their money. And I've learned not to do that. I just simply view it as they're being rational. They're expending their money and enjoying the consumption that they can get with this.

So we develop this culture of being critical of people who buy new cars or people who spend money on things that we perceive to be frivolous. And we look down on them because, well, that's not us. But we don't recognize that that's just simply not us. There's a personality difference.

I'm a huge, huge proponent of saving. At this point in my life, I am very much saving money. But beyond the amount of money that I, as my wealth and my financial base grows over time, as I accumulate capital, I'll have a decision. Do I want to allocate that capital at my death to my kids or to a charity or something like that to build an estate?

And I don't know what those decisions will be today. But let's assume that I allocate a certain amount of money towards those things. Then at that point in time, the rational thing for me to do is to spend the rest of my money on the things that are important to me throughout my lifetime.

So that's a little bit more nuanced view of the saving versus spending. And so what happens is I think a better way to approach it, instead of looking down on people because they're not saving money and somehow viewing it as a moral shortcoming, why don't we show people what they can achieve if they save money?

So look in the personal finance community. Look at the traction that occurs right now with the early retirement financial independence movement. There is a major, major push from many people pushing towards this idea of early retirement. And you say, "We've got this retirement crisis in the country. There's a retirement crisis in the country, but no one has any money saved for retirement." Well, that's true.

But the reason is, have you ever thought of the fact that most people just simply don't want to retire? They might not want to retire. Now, I certainly don't think that everybody holds that opinion. There are many things that can happen. But look at the motivation that somebody can achieve when they're focusing on early retirement.

Because now they can see and they can connect this idea that, "I would like to be financially independent in 10 years." And there's this idea of freedom, and that's very motivating. So now, instead of having to fight this stupid, "Oh, I have to budget $100 in this category and I have to feel deprived because I'd like to spend $150." No, it's not about deprivation.

It's about seeing the vision of what I want and then following it. So that would be just an example of one of those things that would be the fundamental of personal finance. Saving money. Saving money is not always the rational thing to do. If I had a million dollars and I were diagnosed with terminal cancer, if I, assuming I had taken care of my medical costs, assuming I had taken care of my family that was depending on me, I would work as hard as I could to spend the million dollars before I died.

I would. And I think that's a rational approach. Now that's very different than at this stage of my life, where I'm very focused on saving money because I value the future higher dollars and the freedom that money buys me for the future. That's why I save money. Does that help to understand what I say as far as dogma versus going a little deeper and teaching people how to think?

That's what I mean. Yes, yes. And I hope my listeners don't think that I'm looking down on them if they're not saving money, but I do preach that they should save money because ... And maybe on my show I don't explain this enough, but if we don't save any money, then we are trading in those future dollars for stress when we don't have the money for a broken engine in the car or whatever like that.

All right. The real reason why we're getting on this topic today is because ... And I remember it was way back in episode 25 or something of yours that you had mentioned that you wanted to get into the discussion about Dave Ramsey's investing advice. And now we need to lay the foundation here that Joshua Sheets is not a Dave Ramsey hater.

He actually went through the process of getting out of debt following Dave's principles. Is that correct? You want to tell a little bit about that story? I'll tell the story. I know that I've been looking forward to this conversation, but I've also been very fearful of the conversation because it's easy to pick on those who are successful.

And it's very challenging to negotiate because I do not want to be negative towards any one person. And so let me tell my Dave Ramsey story. What if I called in? I think I did call in. I don't remember. But let me tell ... I may have called in on this Friday show.

But I think it's important because I hear this consistently throughout even this conference at FinCon. I hear this all through the halls. Everyone is talking about this type of thing. And I think we've got to get the conversation out there because then we can grow together. So I'm depending on you to help me not be a hater because I'm not a hater.

I like Dave. I would enjoy meeting him. I don't see realistically, I don't think we'd ever be best buddies. We don't really have a lot in common other than finance. But I'm not an anti-Dave guy. I first was exposed to Dave Ramsey when I was in college. And my brother listened to his show and my brother gave me a copy of Total Money Makeover.

And at that point in time, I was a fairly arrogant, know-it-all business person. I'm sure it's very surprising because I was a young male in college and we think we know it all. And I was very much focused on real estate investment at that time as my path to wealth and other people's money and no money down and this was in the real estate heyday.

And I got sucked into that. So my brother gave me a copy of Dave's book. He had listened to the show. He'd bought the Total Money Makeover. He gave a copy to me and said, "Here, read this book. I think you'd enjoy it." Not any kind of manipulative, "You've got to do this.

I like this book. I think you'd enjoy it." So I read the book once and I thought, "This guy's dumb. He doesn't know what he's talking about." But there was something that kind of tickled me a little bit. I read it again and then I read it again. And then the third time through, just the statement that stood out to me is he made a statement in the book.

He said, "If you had no payments, how much money would you have in your life?" And at that point in time, I was paying my way through school and what I would wind up doing is I was always just a little bit short and I worked my way through my freshman year, barely.

Then in my sophomore year, I decided I was working too hard, which was nonsense. I was working, but I wasn't working too hard. I actually had three jobs my first freshman year, but I still had plenty of time. And then my sophomore year, so I started borrowing money on student loans.

I borrowed a bunch of money my sophomore year, played and didn't really do any work. My junior year of college, I came back and I got all mixed up on why was I in school at all? What was I going to study? What was I doing? And so I had more loans and I had credit cards.

And what would happen is I would put my books and my gas on the credit card through the academic year and then during the summer, I'd be able to study and I would get it back to zero. So, I just said, "Wow, how much money would I have if I had no payments?" So I got motivated and I set myself a goal of getting out of debt.

And I set myself a goal of getting out of debt, if possible, I wanted to get out of debt before I graduated. So all during my senior year of college, I worked a full-time job. I worked 40 hours a week. I went to class full-time. I took 19 hours of class of all my senior capstone courses.

I saved. I paid cash for my senior year of college. I paid cash for some travel that I did as associated with the senior year. I paid off my credit cards and two weeks before I graduated, I wrote a check to Sally Mae and graduated from school completely debt-free.

And it was freedom, right? And it was awesome. It was really, really cool. I was so proud of myself because I learned it was a stretching time for me to learn how to budget my time in such a way that I could be effective. And I never, I was just blown away.

Graduated from school, took the opportunity, went on a road trip. Fast forward, cutting the story short, I continued to follow Dave's baby steps, excuse me, all during the time while I was doing that, working like a maniac, working 40 hours a week. Dave Ramsey's show was my constant companion, my encouragement.

I was subscribed to his premium membership. I had the three hours a day of the podcast with no commercials, and I listened every day to three hours of his show. And it was a major encouragement for me all during that time. And I learned a lot about finance. I had always been a finance junkie before, but I learned a lot just hearing how he answered questions.

Well, what happened is I went on and I wound up getting laid off from a job. I had finished, what was it, baby step three, emergency fund. That made, I was out of debt. I had an emergency fund. That's what allowed me to launch a financial planning practice. Well, when I started working as a financial planner, I started, I tried to apply the same Dave Ramsey principles that had worked for me.

I literally carried, I would order his book, Total Money Maker, because it'd make such a big difference in my life. I ordered his book by the case, and I would carry a case of those books around, 10 in a case. I would get the deal where they were 10 bucks a book, 100 bucks for 10 of them, and I would carry them around in my car.

And if I had a client or somebody who was struggling with debt, I couldn't really, in my practice, I couldn't really help them very much. I didn't have the time to really work with them. There was no compensation method where I could do it. I couldn't work for free.

So I would give them a book and I'd say, "Look, this is my book." I gave it away for wedding presents. I gave away audio books. I would give it away as a wedding present, tuck $100 bills in the back of it. This was my thing. If you ask anyone that knows me, I was a raving fan.

The problem was when I started working as an advisor, I tried to apply the same approach that he used with real people, and I started to learn that it didn't work. And it didn't work. Maybe it didn't work because of my personality. Maybe I was too aggressive, too abrasive.

Maybe I was too hardheaded. I don't know. But then what happened is I found out that nobody really follows the Dave Ramsey plan as it's laid out. Now, there's nothing in the Dave Ramsey plan, quote-unquote, and by that I am encompassing not just his book, but everything that I've ever heard for years while listening to him talk on the radio.

There's nothing that can't work. It's just simply that it doesn't work because people don't do it. And so I had all these experiences where people come and say, "I'm a Dave Ramsey fan. I'm a Dave Ramsey fan. I'm following the Dave Ramsey plan." And I say, "Awesome. I love Dave.

Dave made a big difference in my life." And then I asked them what they meant. What happened is I learned that, "Wait a second. You're not actually following the Dave Ramsey plan." So I learned because they had certain opinions about financial products, which is what I was doing. I sold insurance.

I sold investments. I did financial planning. And so they had certain opinions about financial products because they were fun to follow the Dave Ramsey plan. Then I learned, "Wait a second. You're not actually doing it." So I learned to say, "See, I actually followed the Dave Ramsey plan. I didn't have any credit cards.

I had applied for a credit card on my 18th birthday. I learned my lesson, closed all my credit cards after they were paid off. I didn't have any credit cards. I followed all of his things to the letter." And then I started learning that nobody was actually following it.

Then I started recognizing the Dave Ramsey plan is not what Dave Ramsey does. So this is the problem with personal finance, is that what made Dave Ramsey rich is not following the Dave Ramsey plan. What made Dave Ramsey rich was building a massive business, going deeply—well, first of all, going deeply into debt, being an idiot with his financing, screwing up royally, declaring bankruptcy to clear all of the debt, and then going on, pursuing a high-paying career—I'm sure he was a very effective real estate salesperson—pursuing a high-income career, building a business on the side, and the business on the side has ballooned to be huge.

But that's not what his books teach. His books teach, "Save and invest 15% for retirement," not build a massive business. Now, he does talk about business. He has a book, Entree Leadership. It's a good book. I read it. So he does talk about that. But the problem is, the whole personal finance industry, we sell something that we don't do in and of ourselves.

And so we sell this idea that, well, if we just get out of debt, and we just don't do this, and we save 10%. And what I found is that nobody actually—like, I would ask people, I was like, "Do you have credit cards?" "Well, yeah, I do." "Well, do you have a 15-year mortgage?" "No, no, no, I do." "Wait a second." And I learned.

And the most disheartening one for me was—so here's how much I love that. I bought for some of my friends, after I started reading his books and listening to his show, I bought Financial Peace University, and I organized a class for my friends going through the video class, because I wanted to help my friends.

And what I learned is—so I went through Financial Peace University. I guess what's the word? Proctored it or moderated it or whatever. I organized it. And unofficially, I bought the courses and played the DVDs for my friends. But even like the high school curriculum, I watched a friend of mine who went through the high school curriculum, came home from school, and was so excited, yelling at his parents, "You've got to get out of debt!" Dave says, "You've got to get out of debt." And I've heard, "Dave says blah blah blah blah blah," again and again.

And then I watched him. He graduates from high school. Guess what? Six years later, he gets a big boy job. Guess what? Goes out, leases a brand new BMW, destroying his financial life, because he feels good that he knows what Dave Ramsey does. And so I started instituting this as my litmus test.

People say, "I follow the Dave Ramsey plan." My first question would be, "How many credit cards do you have?" Nobody ever said zero. Like, I was the only one who followed the Dave Ramsey plan, and the Dave Ramsey plan wasn't working in the sense that it wasn't actually being effective.

Now, there's no reason why it can't work. It's just that it doesn't work, because people don't do it. And that would be what Dave would say. But then I got into deeper level of financial planning, and I started to gain some actual knowledge in working with clients. Then I started looking at his recommendations.

And the problem is, he goes where he shouldn't go. And by the way, cut me off and rebut at any point, because I don't want to be too harsh, but I think we've got to recognize this, that he goes where he shouldn't go. He's not a financial advisor, and yet he gives financial advice.

And if I gave some of the advice that he gives every day on the radio as a financial advisor, if I gave that advice, I would be completely disbarred. I would lose my license in an instant. I would have lawsuits on my hands, because the advice is flat out dangerous in some ways.

And go ahead. >> You want me to break in here? Because what I hear Dave Ramsey speaking is in general terms. Now there are some exclusions to what he advises on what to invest in. And of course, he teaches against the dangers of certain investments, like viaticals and annuities and things like that.

So you just used the word, the advice that he's giving on investing. It's investing that we're talking about specifically, not to get out of debt plan, right? >> Right. And so that's where, and this is where if you talk to almost any financial advisor, or anybody who's interested, basically what I hear when I have these conversations, because you can't really, it's very dangerous to pick on Dave, because you get immediately qualified as a Dave hater.

And what happens is because if I had listened to me when I was caught in the cult of personality that is the Dave Ramsey show years ago, when I was listening for hours a day, consider that, he's someone who for three hours a day sewed into my life. And I was, I mean, look how deeply my obsession went.

I mean, and how much I did, I would invite friends to his conference. One time I had a friend that I invited to his conference in Tampa. I drove to Tampa to see him speak. And what happens is that I became attached to the person. And once you're attached to any person, then you face a situation where you start to become blind to the facts of what they're saying, and you start to have allegiance to a person.

So that's where, what's dangerous is I wouldn't have listened to what I'm saying right now, because I would have said, no, Dave Ramsey's right. But once I got a little bit disattached, and I kind of was able to pull back a little bit, and I started looking at the recommendations, I'm going to set even investing aside, because there's nothing in what he says that is necessarily wrong.

Can you buy mutual funds that are growth, aggressive growth, growth in income and international, split your assets 25% between them, and choose mutual funds that have at least a five to 10 year track record with a good mutual fund company? You can. Is there any reason why it won't work?

I don't think so. I think it's as good as many other approaches. So from that perspective, I don't, a lot of financial advice would be really upset with me for right now on that. But I don't have any problem with that. What I have a problem though with is teaching people to expect a 12% rate of return.

And so something like that. The one thing you can do that will get the SEC on your back is if you falsely promise rates of return that are not accurate. And so here's the thing. He ignores so much very important detail. When I have a client come into my office, so we all, if you're interested at all in personal finance, you will often hear something like, you'll hear of the 4% rule.

And the 4% rule is very well known. It's based upon what's called the Trinity study, which was a study that three professors at Trinity College put together, which they basically went back and modeled and they said, what would be a distribution rate of a portfolio that is sustainable over time?

So this is as good as that now, that is flawed. And without going into the details, that there are tons of problems in that, that lots of people smarter than I talk about. Let's use that as a proxy. So a financial advisor who is careful would probably very rarely go higher than a 4% distribution rate from a portfolio.

And even that, I would be uncomfortable with that if the only asset were mutual funds and we were basing it on that. Because there are flaws in that, especially in today's investing environment. But that's a financial advisor who would usually not go over 4%. Well what happened is I had someone say, well I read Dave Ramsey's book, Total Money Makeover, and what Dave Ramsey says is you can average 12% on your mutual funds.

And you can average 12% on your mutual funds and you account for, you lose 4% to inflation. So therefore you can pull 8% off of your portfolio every year. That is flat out dangerous. Because when most advisors will say 4%, and he's saying you can expect 12 minus 4% of inflation and take 8, that's flat out dangerous.

And so you have, and there are far smarter financial advisors than me that write these things very carefully, very carefully, very scientifically. What happens is you can't get past the cult of personality. And so the people who are very engaged in his community, they're engaged around a person, not around ideas.

And that's what's dangerous. Now you could go on to other areas. And so whether it's something like life insurance. So life insurance, everyone wants to get into the life insurance conversation. Most of the time they want to talk about the type of life insurance. Term life insurance, whole life insurance.

I don't care about that conversation. Because what you actually find when you actually do life insurance planning is that asking if you should buy term life insurance or whether you should buy whole life insurance and comparing them, they are completely incompatible. It's like asking, I mean the example that I give, it's like asking should I rent a car, should I lease a car, or should I buy a car?

So an example, and I'll give you this example because I just found this to make it be the most sense. To me when I was trying to research and trying to think my way through it, if you come to FinCon and you're going to be here for a week and you need a car to drive because you're going to travel around Louisiana, does it make sense for you to rent a car, lease a car, or buy a car?

You rent a car, right? Now if you're going to move to Louisiana for a year and you're just doing some business project, you need a car to drive while you're here, and you need a nice car while you're going to be traveling around with clients, does it make sense to rent a car, lease a car, buy a car?

Most Dave Ramsey fans would say never lease a car because that's a waste of money. I would lease a car. You could negotiate a one-year lease or something like that. You're traveling in, you're renting an apartment, you're doing some temporary point. So I'll concede the point. Most Dave Ramsey fans would say never lease a car.

This is a cardinal rule. But most people would say, "I'm just renting a car for a year because I don't want to buy a car. I don't want to maintain two things." Now if you're going to buy a car for 20 years, and you're going to drive a car for 20 years and you've got maybe a 10-year-old son or daughter that you're going to pass a car onto, you're going to buy a car and you're going to own it for a long period of time.

That's the difference between term life insurance and permanent life insurance. They're radically different because they do different things. And so if you are looking for an insurance policy to cover a five-year business buyout, you've bought a business from someone, you're paying a series of payments, they're going to buy a five-year term policy on your life.

There's no question about it. If you are buying a life insurance policy to fund an irrevocable life insurance trust to fund your estate taxes, there's not a chance in the world you would fund that with a term policy over the long term. That's going to be a permanent policy.

So I don't want to get any deeper into that because what happens is people get really upset about it. But let me focus on numbers. When you actually do a life insurance calculation properly, you sit down and there are three major ways to do it. The best of which is doing a needs analysis, which is actually if you die, what do you actually need?

What debt do you want to pay off? What income do you need? For how long? What are the resources that are available? It's called a needs analysis. What Dave recommends is a multiple of income approach. So he says buy 8 to 10 times your income of life insurance. Now what's that number based upon?

That number is based upon the 12% rate of return. So he says buy 8 to 10 times your income of life insurance. So let's say you make $100,000 a year, buy 10 times your income of life insurance. That gives you a million dollars of life insurance. You invest that at 12% per year.

You get $120,000 of income. And then that pays your taxes and inflation and you wind up with $100,000. But that number, is it good enough to put in a book? Yeah, it is. And that's why he does it. But the problem is then that becomes the cardinal rule. And so a Dave Ramsey fan will come into my office and I'll say, "Joshua, let's calculate it." And I'll say, "Let me show you how to do a needs analysis." And he'll say, "No, Dave says I need 8 to 10 times your income." Well, I'm sorry, if you're 22 years old or 25 years old and you have a couple of kids, you need more like 20 times your income of life insurance.

And if you're 55 years old, you probably need less than 8 if you are wealthy. So you may not need any. So what happens is that these "rules" because of the cult of personality, instead of teaching people, "Here's how you approach it," which is what I'm trying to do, and I don't know if I can do it.

By the way, after doing a podcast, I have a world of respect for Dave that I never had before. It is tough to be a broadcaster. And it's tough because you're on the record for everything. And it is a constant challenge. So I have a world of respect that I probably never had before starting my show.

But what happens is I just wish that he and all of us who are in this space, instead of telling people, "Here's what you should do," we would treat people like adults and teach them what we know and teach them how to arrive at their own conclusions and their answers.

But what happens is that's bad marketing. Because then instead of being attached to our brand, then people are attached to the fact that they can do it themselves. But that's what we need to be doing. >> Well, let's go back to the question I had. Is there any one book with all the answers?

I mean, we all know the truth is really only the Bible, but the rest of them are all great advice and you can follow the advice in there. But there's always going to be something else to be learned from another book. Isn't that the same way with Dave Ramsey's advice?

He's writing a book for everybody, but it can't be for everybody. You say the advice is dangerous. I can see that it's not going to be perfect for everybody. But I don't see how it's harmful for somebody unless they have different goals as far as I'm not looking to retire, save for my retirement, I'm not looking to, well, it's a choice if you want to pay for your kid's college, the baby steps.

So you're saying it's dangerous, though. There's other education out there, and none of the answers are going to be any one book. And Dave's even written more than one book. How can you say that Total Money Maker has all the answers? That's what I'm trying to say here is there's no one answer in one book because there's going to be a variety of people, variables in the game here.

People have different goals. We could go back with the 12% discussion if you want. But I think that an educated consumer is a better consumer, and that's why we do multiple podcasts. It's not just one show. It's not one audio recording somebody downloads and listens to over and over again.

We're educating people on a cycle, which his radio show does as well, which is heard by what, five, six million people? So he has to give general advice, and it's up to the consumer to take the advice that they choose. And so I don't see where it's as dangerous as most people sound like they're saying.

Maybe I need to give the mic back to you and let you talk about that. Here would be what I would say as an example. So there are three large, there are many financial radio shows. There are many one hour a week show on Saturday mornings, a local financial advisor is buying air time, and that's, so I don't have any familiarity with those.

But there are three large national radio shows, all of which are dealing with financial topics. I would invite you and others to listen to the difference in these shows. So the big dog is Dave Ramsey. Then you have Clark Howard, and you have Rick Edelman. Now if you go and listen to how they approach their show, there is a dramatic difference between them.

So and you have basically, in my opinion, you have three different levels of professionalism and experience on behalf of the broadcaster. On the one end you have Rick Edelman. Rick Edelman is a financial advisor. He owns a massive financial planning firm, and he has a tremendous amount of experience as a financial advisor, and he added broadcasting on to his practice as a marketing method for his firm.

Clark Howard comes not from a financial background as a financial advisor, but he comes from being interested in finance and being very careful, and he has learned a lot and knows a lot. Dave Ramsey comes from the perspective of primarily talking about budgeting and debt from his experience with his mistakes, but with the exception of a college degree in finance, which evidently he has, he has no other formal experience or formal qualifications in the world of financial planning.

Now I would invite you to go and listen to how they handle financial topics, and you will notice a dramatic difference between the three. What Rick Edelman does, I probably most respect and admire what Rick Edelman does, because when a caller calls Rick Edelman, as a financial advisor who can be held more accountable because he is a financial advisor than Dave Ramsey can be, who is an entertainer, if you listen to how he answers a question, a caller will call in and ask him a question, and if it seems simple, he'll answer it in a simple way.

He'll usually probe a little bit more and try to find out some more technical details, and then he will often say, "That's a really complicated question. I would invite you to call my office and speak with one of my planners." Here in general is what you would need to know to make the decision, though, but there are a lot of detailed facts that you would need to find out.

So I'm going to pick on the hot button topic, and this will get me in trouble, but something like life insurance. If you ask any experienced life insurance agent, life insurance is not a simple thing. It's one of the most complicated financial products ever invented, and it is worse because they get more and more complicated all the time.

There are great policies and there are terrible policies. There are great companies and there are awful companies, and until you are really an expert in life insurance, it's very difficult to identify between them. But if you listen to how Rick Edelman answers the question, he will generally probe, and then he'll say, "This is one where you've got to review your actual policy," and he's very quick to send people to his firm.

Now, that may seem like he's just sending people to his firm because, "I need to build business for my firm." But he'll tell you, he answers the question when it can be answered, but when it can't be answered, he sends someone to an advisor. Clark Howard will get the same question, and Clark is quicker to give a simpler answer, but Clark is quick to acknowledge if the question is more complex.

And Clark will say, "Listen, that's a really great question. I'm not sure I can answer it. I would invite you to, I would encourage you, call a fee-only planner, and you really need to get some good advice on your situation because I don't know the answer." And so if someone calls up and tells Clark, "Hey, listen, I've got this policy," he'll say, "Listen, well, these types of policies are generally not so good, but hey, if you've had this kind of policy and it fits these parameters, then maybe it would be good." When someone calls Dave, Dave is reckless with how he does it.

I know I'm using a strong word, not to be critical. It is being critical. It's an accurate word. Dave has a rule. If you have a whole life insurance policy, sell it. That's his rule. He will never tell somebody, "Take a look at the actual policy and see where you are in the life cycle versus the expenses versus the cost." So Dave, I've heard him say to somebody, "Cancel a policy that's a mature policy, that this policy is growing at several percentage points per year over any other safe investment that you could have, and use that money to pay down your mortgage at 2%.

That makes no mathematical sense." And he goes into all the financial, mutual funds versus the mortgage and the risk calculation. Baloney, guaranteed returns in excess of your mortgage payment, that's a very different thing. You can't just add that with mortgage payments. I'm walking on thin ice here, even bringing up any specific examples, but I'm trying to give a little bit of, not just say it's right, and Josh was in a war with him, because I'm not, but trying to give examples.

Dave goes much farther than he should with entertainment. And there's a big difference between being able to listen to somebody and say, "Listen, I'm really struggling with my finances with my spouse, and we're not budgeting really well, and my spouse seems like he or she is spending recklessly, and we're not on the same page." That's advice that's very personal, and that works well to entertainment.

But when you get off the ditch into detailed, complex financial planning, and you have no experience and no formal qualifications, by the way, I don't believe that formal qualifications are the key, but formal qualifications are a way for the public to judge what somebody knows and what somebody doesn't know.

And I'm not sure that Dave could pass a CFP exam. I'm really not. Because when I listen to him, it's like, "Wow, what on earth, where does that come from?" You just ignored all these other things that you should know about, but it seems like you don't know. So the problem is, though, that you have an audience.

And with this, I'll just wrap up what I'm saying and give you a chance to respond, and then hopefully we can, if I've ticked off the whole world, hopefully I can gain a little bit of back. But what I always tell people is you've got to look at the audience of a show, and the audience.

And the challenge is that we are so bereft as a culture of any financial knowledge, any financial knowledge. We are not taught formally anything. And those who are trying to teach something formally have such an agenda, oftentimes, that the opinion is so skewed that we don't have any tools of defense.

We don't have any critical thinking or any knowledge or any tools of defense. And this is one of the key things that I observe, is that as a public, as a general population, the general IQ of the general population is so low, it's so easy to be bamboozled. And so if Dave would admit that what I'm working with is I'm trying to work with the general population because I'm doing a mainstream radio show, working with people who are listening in their cars as they're driving around, and I'm working with kind of an entry level to finance, and then if he would be careful when he gets into the more advanced topics, and if he would make a referral that wasn't just call my investing ELP, you know, who that person is going to have the heart of a teacher because they're going to teach you about investments.

And oh, by the way, you know, if it went, if it went, if he didn't just give a nod to that, but he actually said, call somebody who can get to know your situation, which is the key. You've got to look at your situation. Then it would be great.

But he doesn't do that. And that's what frustrates, that's what frustrates the financial community, especially the community professional financial advisors. Because I would say that many people agree with so many things, but there are some very important deeper level things. And if he would just make, if he would, if he would not go into the technical things where it displays his ignorance, either ignorance or willful, just and I know it's again, a strong word is either ignorance or it's willful agenda, willful promotion of agenda.

I don't know. Then I think it would be great. And that's what I would love to see him do because he has helped millions of people radically transform their lives, my own included and yours too. Right. So he has been a huge help and I want to give him full credit for that.

But I hate to see, it's kind of like, I feel like it's as though if we don't, if we don't, we who have been helped and have been encouraged by that, if we don't hold our own people accountable, then what happens is we run the risk of losing any credibility.

And I'll give, you're a Christian, so right. So okay, I'll give a, I'll give a spiritual example. If some person says, I'm a great man of God, or I'm a great woman of God, and they're out preaching in the streets, A, on a scriptural perspective, that person is held to a higher standard and rightly so.

But if we wink at the infidelity, if we wink at a priest that abuses little boys, or if we wink at a pastor that has an adulterous relationship with their spouse, or if we wink at sin, who are we if we don't clean up our own industry? And that's kind of what I feel like is that I feel so timid that like I'm not qualified in many ways to judge Dave.

I'm really not, because his level of experience and success has gone so far beyond my own that it's much easier for me to sit down and shut up. But the problem is that we have to hold people accountable, and we have to look accurately. And I would just love to see him adjust his message and acknowledge the fact that I'm working with a mainstream audience and be quicker to be slow with giving financial planning advice with his knowledge.

So that would be my thoughts. Hopefully that makes sense. >> You know, I keep coming up with all these questions as you're talking, but I keep listening because you keep bringing on new stuff, big stuff, and you keep moving the conversation farther. It's hard to go back to that.

You were talking about -- I'm just going to make a statement here. I don't know how to make it a question, and I forget what it was when I was thinking about it. You were talking about Rick Edelman's advice, Clark Howard's advice, Dave Ramsey's advice. And admittedly, I'm a Dave Ramsey fan.

I went through counselor training. I teach financial peace at the university. I'm a huge Dave Ramsey fan, so I am in the Dave Ramsey camp, you could say. I do believe that there are different situations for everybody, and there may be a situation where Baby Steps doesn't work for a specific person.

And I highly recommend everybody educate themselves on this stuff, and that's where I'm going to go with this. With Rick Edelman, you were talking about how Rick Edelman will answer the question, but he'll also direct them to his own firm. Whether that's a conflict of interest, I don't see it as a conflict of interest.

He's directing people to get more education and help in their situation. Brilliant. Love it. That's what he'll need to do. Clark Howard, you said, he will answer the question, but he'll also say, you know, go talk to somebody. I don't listen to Clark Howard very often anymore, so I don't know who he's directing to.

Who does he direct those people to? He will usually, Clark will usually make a referral to a fee-only financial planner, and he will usually mention either an organization called the Garrett Financial Planning Network, which is an organization of fee-only hourly planners, or NAPFA, which stands for National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, which is also a fee-only organization.

So he's directing them to fee-only advisors, which I don't have any problem with that either, because the individual, the consumer, the customer is going to find specific advice to their situation. When you go to Dave Ramsey, he gives you the direction to go check in with one of his ELPs, which is essentially doing the same as Clark and as Rick, because he's directing them to people who are kind of in his network, like Rick Edelman, or to somebody outside of his network, like Clark Howard, but he's saying it in a more general term.

Maybe I'm not saying that right. But these people have been fleshed out because they teach the same thing that he does. So in other words, he's giving advice to go speak to somebody that he knows is going to educate that consumer before they go and invest in anything. And that's one thing he says over and over again, is not just go to get help from somebody who has the heart of a teacher, but to learn about the stuff.

Don't buy something you don't understand. You'll hear him say it over and over again. So it's not that he's not answering the question, and it's not that he's saying just trust my advisor and go with what he says. He always says, basically, learn for yourself what you're getting into so that you don't get bamboozled.

Right. I, if he has changed in the last couple of years, I have not heard more than 20, 30 minutes of his show in the last couple of years, just because it's difficult for me to listen to because I get frustrated. And I have learned to simply to keep my sanity, to walk away from things that frustrate me.

And I'm generally a happier person. I feel the same way about Susie Orman. Okay, good. All right. She gives some great advice, but once it's on the credit score thing, I'm gone. So I have no connection with her because with the exception of flipping through her books, I don't watch TV.

I don't pay any attention to her. So that's why I'm completely unqualified to talk about what she talks about. And here we are, two guys who don't have a big national radio show, and we're ragging on these two successful people. I know what it looks like. Yeah, correct. You got to acknowledge that.

But then for somebody to use that as a total ad hominem argument, and it's fallacy. So that's why I'm trying very hard to focus not on who I am, but on what I say and let the listener judge for themselves. So I'm trying to stay with, I'm trying to avoid using an appeal to expertise or to use myself and promote myself as being somebody I'm not.

I am young. I'm inexperienced. I have some experience in the financial planning world, but I have nowhere near as much experience as Dave. I am a brand new broadcaster who has much to learn. But still, that should not and does not diminish the validity of my arguments. So I just would encourage people to consider my arguments, not me.

To answer your question, I have never heard Dave say, "You need to call a financial planner, and here is the line for my ELP." Maybe he does. And if he does, I fully give him credit for that. So it is his ELP you're saying? Right. What he is saying, in general, in advertisement, if you need help with investing, then go ahead and call my group of ELPs.

There is not generally in the broader financial planning community, there is not generally a high regard for the caliber of the, for the quality of his investing ELPs. I don't know anything about the other programs. I have no idea if his real estate agents are as great as he says they are.

But there's not a high regard in the broader investment community for the technical ability or the high level of professional expertise of his ELP program. But just make audience aware. And again, I've not talked with the exception of one of his ELPs, and people have asked me, "Joshua, why don't you go join this program?" And I have my reasons for not, I don't want to be involved in this program.

But the, and the reason, one of many reasons I don't want to be involved in this program is because then somebody comes in, and this is one of his ELPs that I spoke with, you know, then your clients are schooled to be looking for a 12 percent mutual fund.

And so guess what? They're looking for 12 percent. And when you don't deliver 12 percent, you lose the client. And you have false expectations. And it's a very, I would not want to work with somebody who are coming from that perspective. So -- I don't want to break your thought there, because I want to ask this of you, because I have talked to a couple people before about that.

And that's what I believe is that the reason why the financial planners don't like the whole discussion of 12 percent is, now you have to tell me, are we looking at 10 year, 20 year track record? Where is that 12 percent that you're saying you can't get coming from?

I'm saying is that, if you look, so what Dave's answer would be, unless he's changed in the last couple years, Dave would say, listen, I own many mutual funds that have returned in excess of 12 percent. All you got to do is sit down with Morningstar, have your advisor run a return of the 12 percent, and you'll get that.

So I own, I sold it recently, but for many years I owned a mutual fund called, I no longer own it, it's not a recommendation to the fund. I liked it, and I think it's a good, instructive example. I own a mutual fund called the Investment Company of America.

>> Yeah, I own that too. I will say, I own that, and I like it. >> All right, so you can say that I can't. So I own that fund called Investment Company of America, and it's put out by American Funds. If you look at their literature on the fund, the fund was, its inception date was either 1926 or 1930, somewhere in the mid-1920s.

It's lifetime performance, the last time I looked, from then up through today, is about 12 percent. But what 12 percent, so that's the return of the fund. But what 12 percent ignores is A, that's a loaded fund, so it's going to come with a sales commission, and that sales commission on that fund would be anywhere from zero percent up to as high as 5.75 percent, depending on the amount of money that you have to invest.

Well, that sales commission makes a dramatic difference in the return of the fund, because you have to account for that commission. Now, if you have a million bucks, American Funds will waive all the sales commissions, so you can break point out of it, but that has to be accounted.

Number two is it doesn't account for expense ratios. So American Funds has excellently low expense ratios, but the 12 percent does not acknowledge the expense ratios. That's a gross return. And so when you look at the, depending on which number, you can go through that. But once you take out expenses for the management of the fund, you're not at 12 percent anymore.

And that fund is, when you actually look at the history, and this is where it's very difficult to look at what actually, what number you should actually use. If you generalize the S&P 500 and say, okay, well the S&P 500 over the last 60, 70, 80, whatever number you use, it's about 10 percent rate of return.

But that doesn't mean that the average investor gets 10 percent, and that has nothing to do with being able to count on the 12 percent every year. So if you run a financial calculation, and I assume a 12 percent rate of return every year, A, it's not possible. But B, it leads to such inflated numbers about how much money somebody needs to save that is nowhere near accurate.

So when I run a rate of return calculation for retirement, I'm far more likely to use six or seven percent, unless a client can convince me that I should use a higher number. And this is what happens, is that if you actually run, if you actually run the calculations.

>> Are you seriously pulling out a calculator right now? >> I'm looking to see if I have it. >> Are you looking, you're looking for a calculator. Unbelievable. >> I should, here we go. So let me give you just an example. >> We've got 10 minutes left. >> Right.

So let me give you an example. So this would be, so if I were Dave, and I were saying, okay, let's say how much money we can invest over time, and how much it can grow to. So let's say that I'm a 25-year-old man, I'm talking about from 25 to 65, we're going to invest $100 a month.

So let's clear this, let's do $100 per month, and let's put it in for 40 years, and let's use a 12 percent annual number. >> 1.176. >> 1.176. >> I already know that. >> Is that the number? >> That's the number. >> Okay. So let me just run the math, because I'm not as quick as you.

So let's do 40 years, invested monthly, 10 percent, $100 per month, starting with nothing. At the end of 40 years, that number would be, oh, I used 10 percent, excuse me, just a moment. So let's put in 12 percent. At 12 percent, at the end of 40 years, that number would be $1,188,242.

Now if you run that number at 10, okay, so let's just drop it to 10 percent, that number is now $637,000. That is a 50 percent difference between 10 percent and 12 percent. The average investor, you have to fact check me on this, but the average investor in the average mutual fund gets about, last 20-year study I saw from Dalbar Lipper, gets about like 3.6.

>> Okay, but forgive me for interrupting here, because when we talk about following Dave Ramsey's advice, you will not be saving $100 for 40 years, $100 a month. It will always be $100 a month as just the example of, you know, everybody can become a millionaire. What he teaches is to get out of debt, save up an emergency fund, and then start to invest in your retirement, which is 15 percent of income, which will always be more than $100 a month.

So you're going to get to a million dollars. Yes, maybe the 12 percent is a different rate of return. I don't care which way. I know that we're going to be millionaires eventually, because we're saving more money than $100 a month. >> Right. And so you can get rich on a low income.

I did a show, one of my favorite shows that I did on my show is I said how I'd become a millionaire on a minimum wage job at Walmart. So -- >> I think I missed that one. >> Yeah, go check it. It's a fun one. >> Is it a three-hour show?

>> No, it's about an hour and 20 minutes. So it should fit. Listen to it at 2x speed. That's what I do. So it's how I would become a millionaire on a minimum wage job at Walmart. >> So we're going to get lost in the weeds if we do too much math.

Let me just avoid the rate of return conversation. Just simply say that I would encourage people to do their own research. I would never use 12 percent in any calculation, period, for a financial planning client. And I don't know a single financial planner. Now, we could all be crooks.

We could all be ignorant. We could all not have access to Morningstar. We could all -- so you'd have to judge for yourself. I don't know a single financial planner who would ever use 12 percent in any kind of calculation. So I would just leave it at that and encourage people to do their own research.

But even something like the 15 percent, I'll tell you, one of the things where I feel betrayed is that I saved 15 percent. Where does this number come from? It took me years to figure out where this number comes from. 15 percent. And this is where you'd get the problem.

And I want to be very honest. You get the -- >> Do you want the answer? Because I want to tell you what I think it is. And I'll see if you've got -- >> Sure. >> -- the answer is that it allows you to save a good chunk of money without taking away from reaching your other goals following the baby steps.

>> Right. So I would say here's where the answer is. And it's different. My answer is different. >> I knew it would be. >> And if you go and you run a chart, and the two best people who have this, which I don't have the chart on my site, but I would give two resources for listeners.

Either go and read a book by -- you're the two most accessible. Go and read a blog post on Mr. Money Mustache called "The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Retirement." Or go and read the same chart in Jacob Lundfisker's book "Early Retirement Extreme." It's probably also on his website. But Money Mustache's is the more common.

He does a good job of putting the numbers behind the charts. What you'll find is that if you save a percentage of income at a certain rate of growth over time -- and I'm going to stay out of the weeds with the numbers. If you save 10% of your income, it takes you about 45 years to be financially independent.

If you save 15% of your income, it takes you about 40 years to be financially independent. So if you start at 25, and then if you work until 65, and you save 15% of your income, you'll be financially independent. But the problem is, what do you do if you're 45?

What do you do if you're 52? So he says saving 15% when you're 40 years old is pointless. You will never get -- you will never be retired at 65. So instead of saying to somebody, "Start with 15% as a good role, but you should sit down with a good financial planner, or you should learn how to run a financial planning calculator, and calculate an actual amount of money that you need to hit your retirement goal," people save happily 15% and say, "Dave told me I'm going to be rich.

Dave said I'm going to be rich by 15%." So I recognize the problem of putting everything in a book. You can't. And that's the problem, is you can't put everything in a book. And that's exactly right. So "Total Money Makeover" still, to this day, is the most motivational book I know about getting out of debt.

I don't know how Dave did it. I've got to go and dissect it and see if I can learn, because I want to learn how to motivate people like he does with that book. But you can do that without crossing the line and giving advice that doesn't make any sense.

And it's like there are so many things. I'll give you one last example and then answer any questions. >> I still want to hear how you came up with figuring out what the 15% represents. >> Oh, okay. So good answer. So the average person graduating from college, saving 15%, will be financially independent at 65.

That's it. That's what the number is based upon. So every financial plan that I run for a 20-something-year-old, they need to save about 15% of their income. But it's dramatically different if they're 34, or if they're 44. >> Now, that 15% rate changes, though, at baby step seven once they pay off the house.

>> Right. But baby step seven is so entirely nebulous that no one knows what it means. Save and invest, give money away and become rich. >> Yeah, and that's where he leaves it wide open, wide open for however much you can throw in there. >> I don't want to go into the weeds on that because I have no problem with the seven baby steps.

They are as good a plan as any. They really are. I have no problem with them. What happens is that, and I sit down and I'm like, "Well, what would I give?" I don't have anything better than what Dave says as far as the steps. My steps say, "What are your goals?" and create an actual financial plan.

But I don't have seven steps. They're as good as any other seven steps out there. I have no problem with them. My problem is on the specific financial planning recommendations. I'll give you one last one. Have you heard, when does Dave say to buy long-term care insurance? Remember? >> Right away.

Oh, long-term care, I'm sorry. It's age 60. >> Age 60, right. So this bothered me because I always used to hear his advice and then I started selling long-term care insurance. I have looked high and low to find why age 60 is suddenly the magic date. I can't find.

If anyone can send it to me, I would be interested. Email me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. You send me the study that would illustrate why age 60 is the age to buy long-term care insurance. Now, what Dave would say, and I also have heard, I think, Susie Orman say the same thing.

They say, "Well, before that point in time, before age 60, the numbers are it's just too expensive but it becomes a good deal after age 60." Is that more or less what your impression would be? >> My impression was that most people don't need it until -- very little people need it at age 55 or lower.

So age 60 is when he recommends that you look into buying it. >> Okay. >> Actually, he does say buy it then. He does say you buy it when you're 60. >> So that can be fine and I'll accept that. That's fine. But to me, this really bothered me because I'm an ethical person.

I'm a man of integrity and I want to do the right thing for people. So I'm like, "Well, how should I do this?" So I started researching it. I cannot find a single reason why age 60 would make any difference in a long-term care insurance need versus anything else and here's why.

If you buy insurance at age 55, the fundamental way insurance works is it is actuarially counted to cover the risk at every specific age. So if you buy long-term care insurance at the age of 50, it is dramatically cheaper than it is at the age of 60. If you buy it at 30, it's dramatically cheaper than 60.

If you buy it at 72, it's more expensive. And I'm sitting here and saying, "Well, are Dave Ramsey and Suzy Orman more intelligent than the actuaries that have carefully calculated the risk?" I will tell you that long-term care insurance is perfectly priced at every single age. I own long-term care insurance and I'm 29 years old and it is perfectly priced for the risk for a 29-year-old.

And there is no statistical difference in risk that's dramatic between age 59 and age 60. Why not 59? Why not 58? Well, the reason is you have to just pick a number. But what happens is it's complicated to explain how you actually need long-term care insurance. Here's my explanation.

It's actually not that complicated, but here's my answer if you say, "Well, if not at age 60, then when?" You buy long-term care insurance when you have accumulated enough of a portfolio that that portfolio is then needing to be protected from the risk of the cost of a long-term care event.

Now, that sounds nebulous if you don't understand what that means, but that's the answer. So once you are on track to accumulate enough assets that you would then need to protect from the risk of needing a long-term care event, and if your income and your expenses cannot handle the cost of long-term care, then you insure for it.

Now, I don't care whether that's at 40 or whether that's at 65 or whether that's at 70. If I were working with a client who is 65 years old and they don't have enough assets for retirement, there is not a chance in the world that they should buy long-term care insurance regardless of their age because they need to develop assets.

They can't afford it. And if I'm working with a client who is 40 who has substantial assets enough that they're on track for retirement, and we're doing a risk analysis of the risk of long-term care -- if they can afford it and they need it, they should buy it.

So it's not that complicated, but that's how a financial planner thinks about it. What happens, though, is you get this sound bite. And I've had Dave Ramsey fans sitting in my office, "I'm going to buy long-term care insurance at the age of 60." Why? What's magical about 60? And so I would say, "Well, let's actually run an analysis on your situation." "No, no, no.

Dave says 60. Everything before that is the insurance agent trying to rip you off. Everything after that is..." I'm like, "So that would be another good example." Analysis is something where if you go a little deeper, you get an answer that makes a lot more sense than a sound bite, which is that I recognize -- and with this, I'll wrap up my thoughts unless you have other questions, because I don't want to destroy your audience by going on for a two-hour show like mine.

But hopefully this makes sense. And I would just say that I want people to learn. And I would still probably say to many people -- and this is where I've come -- I stopped giving his books away, because I learned that it wasn't effective for me to do that.

And I couldn't find anybody who actually followed through on his plan. Like I said, ask the people who say, "I'm following the Dave Ramsey plan. How many credit cards do you have?" And I was always the one that didn't have a credit card. And yet they all did. "Well, Dave Ramsey says there are snakes." Okay, fine.

So I learned that people weren't following. It's on one of them. As far as that book, if someone is struggling with debt, I still don't have a better option. Maybe someday I'll gain the skill to be able to write the book that I wish existed. But I don't have a better option for them yet.

It's still an amazing book. And I think that Dave has helped tens of millions of people just think and become more conscious about their money. I really do. And I have a world of respect for him, because he's accomplished a lot of good. I just think he could do so much more good if he weren't so intent on building his brand and differentiating it from everyone else.

And you can see that. Go back and look at the Twitter exchange that he had with the financial advisory community. And to me, that illustrates how he perceives what he's doing. He perceives, evidently, I don't know, I'd like to meet him someday, and if he invites me to dinner, which I doubt would happen, I would love, I would be thrilled to go and talk to him.

Because there's, again, there's a big difference between seeing someone's public persona and what you do and say publicly versus who you are as a person. But I think he could be so much more effective if instead of trying to divide between the general public and his show, if we could all get together, and this is my burden, if we could all work together, and it sounds so airy-fairy, but it's true, if we could all work together and recognize that we each are interested in different things, then we could make a tremendous amount of progress.

And the problem, we are not each other's enemies. The financial advisor and the financial blogger and Dave Ramsey and Jim Cramer, we're not each other's enemies. The enemy is financial ignorance. And the enemy is financial illiteracy. And we have huge problems in our world. And I just say, look at the $222 trillion of debt that the U.S.

government has, including $17 trillion of existing debt and the remaining balance unfunded liabilities. That is not a problem of politicians. Politicians perfectly reflect the culture. That is a reflection on the American culture. And I just, maybe I'm idealistic, but I just think that we can work together instead of dividing and then we will conquer the financial illiteracy and the financial ignorance and will help people to find and achieve the lifestyles that they want to achieve if we work together instead of fighting all the time.

So that would be my thought. All right. Will you allow me to wrap this up then? Because I think, okay, we're coming from you as a Dave Ramsey fan, just saying up to the end of debt point, maybe I'll make a generalized statement. Hold on a second. Yeah, we're right at the one minute mark, or one hour mark.

You as a Dave Ramsey fan, just when it gets to the investing, it needs to be more complex. So not a Dave hater. We're not saying that. And me as a Dave Ramsey fan, we'll just say a Dave lover. We're both saying the same thing here as far as it's the perception of the consumer, to use these two words, Dave says.

That's the dangerous part because I don't want to say they're blindly following. I'm saying they're only following the sound bites, the one advice. So that is, I think we're on the same track here. We're all trying to educate the consumer to learn for themselves, to know that there's different situations for each person, that there may be some adjustments to their financial plan, whether it's the seven baby steps or Susie Orman's build your FICO score plan, whatever.

That it's the danger of ignorance. You said that earlier. Yeah. No, I agree. And I agree. And it's very challenging because, again, you're walking a tightrope. And I guess my summary would be is that it took me a long time and I think I'm still in many ways recovering from the dogma and the cult of personality that is so easy to want to build.

And I'll tell you what I see as a difference is I think that, see, five years ago, he was the only option as far as for me. Where I think we're going to have a dramatic transformation, which I'm so excited about, is the financial blogging and podcasting community. Because now there are dozens and dozens of new financial shows.

And a few years from now, there will be hundreds and hundreds of new financial shows. And that competition and that ability to more easily access a broader voice, I think is going to make a major difference as far as helping people to be educated. The audio resources for people to be educated have not existed.

You've had to go and read books. And the average American simply doesn't read. And so that is a reflection on our, we're an ignorant culture in general because we don't read. And so we're easily led, we're easily attracted to personality. So the good thing is, the cool thing is, again, I'm inspired by Dave.

That's why I started my show, is I want to provide the option for people who are ready to maybe go a little deeper, go a little farther. And I admire him for what he has done. And all of my comments are just that I think he could be more effective if he, I think he could be more effective.

And that's my hope. Because we're not enemies. We need the education. We need to build financial literacy. So I hope that I have done an effective job at, you know, the problem is financial advisors can't talk in public. They're restricted behind the rules of the SEC and the financial industry.

So they can't do it. So hopefully I have done an effective job speaking for, you know, the financial advice community just to say in a caring way that we do have some concerns because I have faced the clients. I faced the client who Dave said, "Buy a 10-year term," and guess what?

You're uninsurable. That wasn't a good plan. You can't get any more life insurance. And that is heartbreaking. And I faced the clients who are in and out of debt, in and out of debt. And so I just wish that I think together we can grow and we can make a massive improvement in our culture.

And I am entirely optimistic about that happening. And I'm so thrilled that you have your show because you can speak to an audience that Dave won't appeal to. And I have my show because I'm going to speak to an audience that Dave won't appeal to. And even just here at FinCon, there are dozens of people.

And I think all of us, our lives have been touched by Dave. We owe him a great debt of gratitude because he has paved the way and tutored many of us. And yet the hallmark of a great teacher is acknowledging, is wanting to see their students be more successful.

And that's what I love to see is I love to see people going a little bit beyond maybe the teacher that started with and going to a deeper level. Joshua Sheets, RadicalPersonalFinance.com. I'm spent. I'm done. I did an hour of show time. It's been a wonderful, wonderful discussion. And I thank my listeners for listening to this.

We're also going to put this out on Joshua's feed as well. Joshua Sheets, thank you so much. Thank you. And I would just ask one last thing. I have tried very, I was very nervous about producing this show because I have good intentions and I do not want to be a Dave hater.

I would crave some feedback for those of you listening. Either if what I've said has resonated or if you hate it, that's fine too. Tell me or comment on my show or comment on Steve's show. I would like to know and hopefully I've done a good job and I hope that my heart has come through and that this can be a helpful message.

If this has offended you because I have, if this has offended you because I've stepped on a sacred cow, I understand because I think that in years past I would have been there too and I wouldn't have wanted to listen. It took a while. So I'm not bothered by that, but I'd love to have any feedback and I hope that my heart came through in this and was helpful.

Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new. Whether you're making a traditional roasted turkey or spicy turkey tacos, your go-to shrimp cocktail or your first Cajun risotto, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace your traditions.

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