Young adults are rejecting the finance guru’s advice to live frugally while getting out of debt
4 min
On their own for the first time, young professionals are craving sound financial advice. They just don’t want to hear it from Dave Ramsey.
Ramsey, the well-known and intensely followed 63-year-old conservative Christian radio host, has 4.4 million Instagram followers, 1.9 million TikTok followers and legions more who listen to his radio shows and podcasts. His message is brutal and direct: Avoid debt at all costs. Pay for everything in cash. Embrace frugality.
Plenty of 20- and 30-year-olds are pushing back, largely on TikTok. The hashtag #daveramseywouldntapprove, for instance, has 66.8 million views. Many say they don’t want to eat rice and beans every night—a popular Ramsey trope —or hold down multiple jobs to pay off loans. They also say Ramsey is out of touch with their reality.
Rising inflation has led to surging prices for groceries, cars and many essentials. The cost of a college education has skyrocketed in two decades, with the average student debt for federal loans at $37,000, according to the Education Department. Overall debts for Americans in their 30s jumped 27% from late 2019 to early 2023 —steeper than for any other age group. And home prices have risen considerably, while wages haven’t kept pace.
“What Dave Ramsey really misses is any kind of social context,” says Morgan Sanner, a 26-year-old who runs a résumé-advice company in Columbus, Ohio, and has shared her feelings about Ramsey on TikTok.
She began paying off $48,000 in student loans (a Ramsey do ) and also took out a loan to buy a 2016 Honda (a Ramsey don’t ). Her rationale was that it was safer to pay extra for a more reliable car than a junker she could buy with cash. She feels these sorts of real-life decisions don’t factor into his advice. Her video about this has 875,000 views.
Through a spokeswoman, Ramsey declined an interview request. Direct messages to Ramsey went unanswered.
For Ramsey—whose TikTok posts often contain incendiary tidbits from his radio show—the pushback might be part of the plan. After all, uncomfortable advice is a key component of his success.
Naiomi Israel began watching Dave Ramsey’s videos on YouTube when she was in college at New York University, before TikTok became the go-to platform. (He has more than 500,000 subscribers on YouTube.)
“Not knowing about money feels scary, especially when you’re a young adult and have to pay your bills,” she says. “You wonder, ‘Should I go on a trip or invest in the S&P 500?’ I’m just looking for the right answers.”
Israel, who now at age 23 works for a company that develops finance curricula for schools, says she was initially drawn in by Ramsey’s no-nonsense advice. He recommends setting aside some money for emergencies. She did.
But eventually, some of his messages triggered a different response from her: “Wait, what?”
When she saw a comment from Ramsey online about how people receiving pandemic stimulus payments were “ pretty much screwed already ,” Israel felt it came across as shaming people. The pandemic shutdowns ended a decadelong economic expansion for Black Americans , a disproportionate number of whom lost their jobs and relied on those checks.
“Moralising financial decisions is very damaging to marginalised groups,” says Israel, who is Black.
Ramsey’s anti-debt evangelism arose from personal circumstances. He says on his website that he took on too much debt while accumulating real estate as a young man. He also bought a Jaguar, jewellery for his wife and a trip to Hawaii. In 1988, he filed for bankruptcy.
How did rich people stay rich? By not paying interest to banks, he concluded.
He started a radio show in 1992 to answer callers’ money questions. It became the top-rated show in Nashville, Tenn., and eventually became a nationally syndicated call-in program with about 20 million weekly listeners.
The radio program begot Ramsey Solutions, a 1,000-person company that encompasses a podcast, 23 money-management books, a budgeting app and personal-financial coaching. Dozens of Facebook groups are devoted to following his methods. Ramsey’s net worth is estimated at more than $200 million.
Many young adults scratch their heads over his advice that people should let their credit scores dwindle and die .
People need a good credit score, says Mandy Phillips, a 39-year-old residential mortgage loan originator in Redding, Calif. She uses TikTok and other social media to educate millennials and Gen Z about home buying. Scores are vital when applying for mortgages and rentals.
She also takes issue with Ramsey’s advice to only obtain a home loan if you can take out a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage with a down payment of at least 10%. Few younger buyers can pay the large monthly bills of shorter-term mortgages.
“That may have worked years ago in the ’80s and ’90s, but that’s not something that is achievable for the average American,” Phillips says.
Ramsey acknowledges on his website that his views aren’t always in step with conventional economic thinking. “I have an unusual way of looking at the world,” he notes, nodding to his past debt troubles.
Housing is a particularly hot-button topic. He advises people to only buy a house with their lawfully wedded spouse. Yet many young adults are pooling their finances with partners, friends or roommates to buy their first homes.
Ramsey is perhaps best known for advocating a “ debt snowball method ”: People with multiple loans pay off the smallest balances first, regardless of interest rate. As you knock out each loan, he says, the money you have to put toward larger debt snowballs. Seeing small wins motivates people to keep going, he says.
Conventional economic theory would be to pay off the highest-interest loans first, says James Choi, a finance professor at the Yale School of Management, who has studied the advice of popular finance gurus.
“What Dave Ramsey would say is, ‘I don’t care if paying down the highest-interest debt first is cheapest, because if you give up midway through, that’s more expensive.’ I think the jury is out on that,” Choi says.
Ramsey’s advice has helped a lot of people reduce their spending.
A University of Copenhagen researcher conducted a study that found that when Ramsey’s radio show entered new markets between 2004 and 2019, households in those cities decreased their monthly expenditures by at least 5.4%.
Ramsey’s save-not-spend message sounds logical, young adults say. It’s his all-or-nothing approach that doesn’t work for them.
Kate Hindman, a 31-year-old administrative assistant in Pasadena, Calif., who has taken an anti-Ramsey stance on TikTok, ended up with $30,000 in credit-card debt after she and her husband faced income-reducing job changes. They’ve since turned it into a consolidation loan with an 8% interest rate and pay about $1,200 a month.
She wonders if the debt aversion is generational. Perhaps younger people are less willing to make huge sacrifices to be debt-free. Maybe carrying some amount of debt forever is a new normal. Hindman’s video about her credit-card debt journey—and how it doesn’t align with Ramsey’s perspective—has more than 745,000 views.
Hindman said in the TikTok video: “I’m sorry, I’m not willing to do anything to get out of debt. I’m not willing to eat rice and beans every day.”
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Strong family financial planning can help reduce taxes and support younger generations. From intrafamily loans and asset gifts to inheritance disclaimers, strategic cooperation can create meaningful financial benefits—when families have the trust and structure to make it work.
4 min
Happy is the family whose members—parents, grandparents and grown children—trust each other enough to cooperate on shared goals, especially financial ones. When that is truly the case, Uncle Sam’s tax rules can help as well.
This matters especially now that mortgage rates are above 7%, and many families are looking for ways to help younger members. If the elders have resources and are confident younger ones can cooperate, a family loan could make homeownership possible while providing the elders with a useful income stream.
Other strategies can actually lower taxes, such as when funding 529 plans or Roth IRAs, or when someone inherits a traditional IRA with required withdrawals larger than they will need.
Here are three strategies useful for functional families.
It is perfectly legal for families to lend money to a relative for a down payment or even a private mortgage.
But it is important not to cut corners, says Ryan McKeown, a CPA with Modern Wealth Enhancement in Minnesota. If the loan is for a down payment, be honest with the mortgage provider and have a formal agreement. The lender owes tax on the interest payments received.
If the loan is for a private mortgage, both sides should have legal representation with a formal written agreement, including payment terms. The lender owes tax on the interest, and the borrower often can deduct it if he or she itemizes.
To avoid IRS trouble, the interest rate shouldn’t be lower than the agency’s Applicable Federal Rate at the time of the loan. Currently that is about 5% for loans longer than nine years; about 4.5% for loans three to nine years; and about 4% for loans three years or less. Currently, traditional mortgage rates are generally above 7%.
In addition, the lender could use the $19,000 annual gift-tax exemption (described below) to forgive some or all of the interest or principal annually. If both lenders and borrowers are married, that is up to $76,000 a year. There is no tax for the borrower on such forgiveness, because it is from a gift.
If you’re going this route, McKeown advises against having a fixed plan to forgive the debt. Instead, do it in one-off letters specifying the amount—and keep careful records. Otherwise the IRS might try to treat the loan as a taxable gift.
Powerful tax-saving moves for families often use gift-tax provisions. Under current law, anyone can give anyone else up to $19,000 of assets annually, free of gift tax. That means a married couple with three grandchildren could give them a total of $114,000 in 2026.
The gifts can be cash or other assets, like stock. For noncash gifts, the cost basis—which is the starting point for measuring taxable gain after a sale—“carries over” to the recipient. So if someone buys $1,000 of stock and gives it away when it is worth $5,000, the recipient’s cost basis is $1,000. If the recipient later sells the shares for $8,000, the taxable gain is $7,000.
Here’s an example showing how gifts could save a family taxes. Grandma is a widow of modest means, while her child and spouse have prospered. The couple has two children, and they want to contribute $5,000 to a 529 college-savings plan for each—but they need to sell stock to do it. Their tax rate on the sale would be 18.8%, and they would need to sell about $11,000 of stock.
However, Grandma’s federal tax rate on the stock sale is 0%. If the couple gives $10,000 of shares to Grandma, she could sell them, pay no tax, and fund the grandchildren’s 529 plans. This saves about $1,000 of tax.
These moves are legal, and they could be used in other ways, such as to help a young person fund a Roth IRA.
But trust among family members is essential: Under the law, givers can’t put conditions on a gift. Grandma could use her stock proceeds to take a cruise, but she makes 529 contributions instead.
Mark Sellner, a retired tax attorney and CPA living in Sarasota, Fla., uses this strategy. His children sell stock he gives them and fund 529 plans for his grandchildren.
The family’s tax savings aren’t huge, but he likes other benefits. The sales by his children don’t boost his adjusted gross income, which in turn could raise his Medicare Irmaa premiums or his 3.8% surtax on net investment income.
Sellner doesn’t worry about his children using the funds for another purpose.
“There can’t be any strings attached to gifts. Of course, it is up to us to decide whether to make them in the future,” he says.
Two caveats: The “kiddie tax” applies to most children under age 24, and it is levied at the parents’ rate on investment income above $2,700 in 2026. Consider this before making gifts to a young person.
Investors who give away stock also forgo the step-up, an important provision that exempts assets held at death from capital-gains tax.
Sellner knows he’s losing a step-up, but says, “The children could use a little more now. Why should they wait 20 years to get it?”
A disclaimer is a highly useful strategy in which one heir renounces an inheritance in favor of another heir. Assuming family members cooperate, this can save taxes.
Here’s one example. Dad died and had a large traditional IRA that he left to Mom. She has enough assets and income to cover her expenses, and she lives in a state with a stiff estate tax. The inherited IRA would put her estate over the threshold.
Also surviving are three young-adult children. If Mom disclaims all or part of Dad’s IRA within nine months of his death, that amount could go directly to the children. They will have 10 years to empty the account, and the family as a whole will likely save estate and income taxes.
Disclaimers have many key details, especially regarding beneficiary documents. Although heirs have great freedom in choosing what assets to disclaim, the rules about who gets disclaimed property are rigid. It is best if the original owner names tiers of heirs so that if one disclaims, the next recipient is clear.
