Readers of this blog may or may not be aware of this, but I’m a big fan of Dave Ramsey. If you’re not familiar with him, Dave is a radio talk show host and author whose focus is primarily on personal finance advice. As he says at the beginning of the radio show, he believes (and teaches) that “debt is dumb.”

Recently, I heard (about) someone complaining about Dave. The complainer said that they couldn’t believe Dave had gotten rich and gained a huge following simply by telling people that spending less than they earn would help them get out of debt and build savings^[a]. Not long before I heard that, I was talking to my dad about Dave, and he asked how he could fill a three hour show daily giving that advice. My answer? He repeats himself a lot.

The advice that Dave Ramsey gives is, in general, simple common-sense advice, but it isn’t easy advice. For me, at least, I find that it’s easy to build a budget. Before I built this one, I had built a budget several times over the last few years, but this is the first time one has stuck. The reason prior budgets didn’t stick was not because the budgets were complicated, but because it isn’t easy for me to stick to them. I imagine that I’m not unusual in that regard (though I will readily admit that I am unusual in other areas). Even before I was able to make it work for me, I could see that sticking to a budget and paying down my debts would work — I just found it hard to do.

According to the Dave Ramsey article at Wikipedia, Dave has been criticized for giving simple answers to complex problems. It’s strange to me how anyone would argue with the simple fact that spending less than you earn and using the overage to pay off debts will get you out of debt. Just because someone finds that they are unable to exercise the discipline to follow Dave’s simple plan doesn’t mean that the plan doesn’t work — it simply means that the individual in question didn’t follow it^[b].

We see this effect in other areas, as well. President Bush recently urged Congress to pass a bill that would increase the amount of money spent fighting AIDS in Africa^[c]. In order to get this bill passed, Republicans had to compromise with Democrats to remove an earmark that would have reserved some portion of the money for abstinence promotion.

Given that individuals who abstain from consensual sex and drug use can drastically reduce^[d] their chances of getting HIV/AIDS, why would we remove this earmark? Many people will tell you that abstinence education doesn’t work, but that doesn’t mean abstinence doesn’t work. It simply means that, even when the advice (“Don’t have sex outside of a monogamous relationship with someone you know is uninfected”) is simple, people won’t follow it unless the advice is also easy. Depriving yourself of something you really want is hard, and many individuals simply aren’t interested in that.

A lot of people do not want simple solutions to their problems. They want easy solutions. What’s more, because they don’t want to face this fact about themselves, many people will claim that the simple solution doesn’t work, even in the face of evidence that it does.

1. This is paraphrased, incidentally. I didn’t hear the complaint directly, and am not even directly quoting my source; my memory isn’t that good. [↩]
2. I’m not saying that’s necessarily the end of the world — J.D. at Get Rich Slowly often describes what worked to get him out of debt, but he’s quick to admit that certain aspects of his plan (or Dave Ramsey’s) may prove to be stumbling blocks for some people. He’s not hung up on following his process; he wants everyone to find what works for them. [↩]
3. Because it’s outside the scope of this post, I’m not going to discuss whether or not we should be paying for this; A Field Guide to American Politics, the podcast from All American Blogger, covered it very well a few days ago, and a quick search of the internet will probably yield plenty of conservative/libertarian blogs talking about it. [↩]
4. They don’t quite eliminate the chance completely, since tainted blood or non-consensual sex would still transmit the disease, but neither of those are a significant percentage of how the disease currently spreads. [↩]