Tell all you geniuses what. Why don't one of you call in to his show and ask to debate him about credit cards. If he concedes that you win, I'll not only fund you that $10 for the ticket, but I'll fund you $100 on top of that.
Here's the extent of the conversation:
Me: I use a credit card and keep a low balance that I pay off at the end of the month, every month.
Ramsey: What happens if a scenario occurs where you need to carry a balance.
Me: Then I budget a payoff as quickly as possible.
Wow. Tough convo.
Yeah. Not how it would go.
No crap. He'd probably put up a lot of talking points about variable interest rates, fine print, etc.
The bottom line is that it's pointless for someone with an 800+ credit score (
) to have a conversation with a guy who doesn't like credit. I know how to use credit. I know when to use it, and I know the advantages of having a good score. His message is good for people who don't know how credit works, or they simply get more and use more than they can afford.
Credit, specifically credit cards, helped me out of a couple of jams in my early twenties when I had some medical bills and not a lot of money to my name. It was paid off with minimal impact to me, financially. However, just starting out, I didn't have the kind of money to cover them, and I wasn't about to ask my parents for the cash. So, I used the credit card, paid it off in a couple of months, and that was that.
It's easy to sit there and say credit is bad when you're talking to a bunch of people who don't know how to handle money. It's kind of like a guy who runs AA meetings can sit there and talk about how alcohol is bad to a bunch of alcoholics. Anything that can have that much of an impact on your life must be used responsibly, and if it isn't, it can eff you up. It's easy to screen calls and tell Joe in Tallahassee that it's probably not a good idea to finance an $80,000 camper, or tell Jeff in Kansas that he should pay for stuff on the Internet with his debit card so he doesn't get himself into trouble financially by buying that really sweet Dale Earnhardt memorial futon on eBay.
I guess the bottom line is that people should be educated about personal finance, but in my opinion, they should learn how to use credit to their advantage and not take advice from some backasswards extremist that wants to keep them from it because they might hurt themselves with it. He'd be doing his listeners a greater service by teaching them how to use it wisely instead of telling them to pay it all off and pay for crap with cash. But that would require him to actually explain things to a caller in segments longer than one or two minutes in length and not sound like a dry, sanctimonious ass.
