DebtFREE-Revolution

OK, I’ve had coffee and had a conversation with my mother about money and finances.  Nothing like controversy in between the first and second cups of coffee! 

I’ve mentioned in passing here that my mom is definitely not a Dave Ramsey follower, although I have tried to pique her interest by telling her I went to church during the tapings of the new Financial Peace University videos.  I’ve given her the URL to this blog several times, but so far have seen no indication she reads it.  My son took copies of the old FPU audio files up to Indiana for his dad and my mom to hopefully listen to.  So far, no indication of that either.

I’ve remarked that I don’t think Mom will ever truly give up her credit cards.  She’s gone into debt to fund her international adoptions, and over the summer told me she intends to cash out some of her retirement for living money while the new kid(s) transition to life in America.  (No comment on THAT subject….)

Well, this morning Mom was talking about Crown Financial Ministry and how she is considering being a counselor for them.  This is the same woman who blew the budget I helped her construct that same evening over this past summer.  Yes, she made a budget in the morning before I left to return to Tennessee, and that night when I let her know I made it home safely, she confessed to blowing it in less than twelve hours.  At the time I simply figured my mom hadn’t hit the “I’ve had it” point that tends to inspire people to take control of their finances.

So, with Mom’s rather surprising announcement this morning, I decided to find out what Crown teaches about debt and whether or not they will inspire Mom to shed hers.  I’m seeing a lot of similarity between Crown and the Dave Ramsey “baby steps” with the main differences being the intensity used to get out of debt and the attitude towards credit cards.  I’m not sure how recent this is, but here is Crown’s Ten Things to Find Financial Freedom.  My biggest disagreement with this article is in point #8:

Remember that the problem is not credit cards but the misuse of credit cards.

But, their big thing is getting on a budget and paying off debt and saving up money, all things I wholeheartedly endorse.  I’ve even said before that it doesn’t matter whether or not a person uses the Dave Ramsey plan to get out of debt or some other program/system, as long as the result is the same.  If Crown Financial Ministry is what it takes to get my mom’s finances back in the black and helps her to begin prospering, then I will be a fan (although not a subscriber LOL) of that program.

Oh, speaking of Dave Ramsey’s “baby steps,” next week the M-Network will do a multi-blog project on the Dave Ramsey 7 Baby Steps, and I have been invited to participate since I was part of it and also the biggest (?) Dave Ramsey fan of the network.  Look for it to start on Monday!  I’ll be covering “Baby Step ZERO” which actually does exist on Tuesday.

Dave Ramsey is pretty big in the personal finance blogosphere.  Whether you love him or hate him, he gets a lot of posts published about him as a “financial guru” (or “hypocrite” or “con man” or “cult leader” or even “liar” as one recent blog mentioned!) and also about his get-out-of-debt ideas. 

There’s a considerable amount of bloggers on each side of the fence.  I am firmly in the “love Dave Ramsey” camp.  Some are firmly in the “hate Dave Ramsey” camp.  But there is actually a third camp, and this is the group that makes me bite my fingertips: people who blog about Dave Ramsey without really knowing what he says or writes!  There are quite a few in this camp who might read a snippet on another blog and pop off without doing all the research.  Then there are a few who will take the time to do a little research over at DaveRamsey.com but still not really understand what the message is.

I’m going to pick on PaidTwice (with her permission!) and her misunderstanding of the Dave Ransey term “gazelle intensity.”  She posted today saying she isn’t a gazelle, but a cheetah …. ummm … yeah she hasn’t been through Financial Peace University or attended a Live Event to see Dave Ramsey’s whole gazelle-and-cheetah routine.

I tried to warn her before it posted that she didn’t really want to call herself a cheetah in the same post as mentioning Dave Ramsey.  She says she read the explanation on the Dave Ramsey site about gazelle intensity, and even links to it.  Now I will agree with her that this specific explanation doesn’t capture the true meaning.

Along with being the fastest mammal on dry land, cheetahs are predators … and that is the metaphoric way Dave Ramsey uses them to represent credit card companies and in general any pure lending company that exists only by “feeding” off of people.  They are definitely the fastest in the financial world when it comes to slapping fees on their customers!

The whole idea of gazelle intensity comes from a Bible verse in Proverbs: “Deliver yourself like the gazelle from the hand of a hunter.”  Dave Ramsey says he didn’t understand that verse until he saw the gazelles and the cheetah on the Discover channel and watched the clips of gazelles running to escape the faster cheetah.  Gazelles run and bob and weave and dodge because their very lives depend on it!  Dave Ramsey says this is how you should get out of debt, since your very financial life depends on it if you want to thrive as well as survive.

So even after her explanation, why would I still insist she shouldn’t want to be “cheetah intense?”  Well I watched that same Discover channel show on the gazelles and the cheetahs … and cheetahs have NO staying power.  They are very fast sprinters, but give up quickly since they only catch one gazelle in 19 chases.  They’re really not very sucessful either at catching the gazelles, all in all.  The gazelle gets away 18 out of 19 times!  I’ll take my chances on the gazelle side of this equation, even though I don’t consider myself to be truly gazelle intense.  More on that last bit in another post…

Dave Ramsey often quotes the proverb: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.”  Last Wednesday while in the post office, my son asked if he could borrow some money until today (when I pay him for his chores).  For the past five days, I have been trying to make this proverb as real as possible to my teenager son.  In fact, after we were done at the post office and got back into the car, Dave Ramsey quoted it on the radio as soon as we turned on the car!

I warned my son: Mom is worse than any loan shark could think of being.  Mom will charge an interest rate that would make payday loan places cringe.  Son will be Mom’s wage slave for a period of five days, unless Mom feels she didn’t get her money’s worth in which case that period of slavedom will be extended.  (Is slavedom even a real word?  Eh, who cares…he didn’t ask!)

To my son’s credit, he has put up with all my demands in good humor.  To my credit, I haven’t made him scrub the bathroom with an old toothbrush.  The dishes have been done, the kitchen floor is clean, and the aluminum cans have been stomped as soon as I mention it.  So how did I accomplish this with a teenage son who tries every delaying tactic known to man and boy when it comes to chores? 

I threatened to get up before he goes to school, take him to school in the cute OLD purple pickup, while dressed in my purple robe and slippers…and make him wear a Roman-style slave placard around his neck that says “I borrowed money from Mom so I am now her work slave.”  Yes, I am actually enjoying this LOL

Hopefully my son is NOT enjoying this!  I want my child to learn on the gut-level that borrowing is bad, so he should only borrow in extreme cases when there is just no other option available.  I don’t want my son to make the same money mistakes I did when I first became an adult and got into debt.  I don’t want him to live crisis-by-crisis and hand-to-mouth.  I want him to be confident and competent with money.  I also want him to know, down on the cellular level, that work equals money and money equals work.

So far my son has kept up his end of the bargain, and not complained about the chores.  I’m not sure if he is developing a sense of pride about it, or if I just didn’t make the chores unpleasant enough.  Perhaps I should have made him clean the baseboards around the kitchen with a scrubby sponge…but then again he has asked to go to his school’s lock-in on Friday night, so I can always tell him that chore will be a way for him to earn extra money!  “Overtime” work equals extra money.  The sooner he learns these things, the better off he will be once he becomes an adult man.