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Dave Ramsey Is Sometimes Right, But OH SO WRONG For First Time Home Buyers
Dave Vs. Dave Round 2
For those of you new to the show, let me explain. I have a love/hate relationship with Dave Ramsey. Dave is great for debt but horrendous for first-time home buyers. The world has changed and his old-school philosophies do not take into account the challenges facing Millennials, Gen Z, and all the first-time home buyers out there. Even he says, “In 2022, the time to buy your first home was yesterday. There is no crash and no bubble.” That is right. Captain Conservative Dave Ramsey says the market is not going to pop. The only place for the market to go in the future is up. Congratulations to Dave for being right, but in this episode, we are also going to discuss where his advice is dangerously wrong for first-time home buyers. It is Dave versus Dave round two.—
What is happening, my How to Buy A Homies? I am the other Dave, David Sidoni, and for many years, this has been my jam, my complete and total passion. I have been fighting with Dave Ramsey loyalists for the entire time. There is nothing new for me in this episode. I have already been through this. In fact, I did it once already on episode 69 but this is round two. This is not going to be a complete-rag-on-Dave session. It is just a simple look at some simple math. However, I am going to get real and it might not be so pretty. Dave has cost his followers hundreds of thousands of dollars by giving awful advice. He loves to claim that he loves real estate, but he hates debt more. Where the problem is, is that he thinks that your home mortgage, he lumps that into all debt. Therefore, his advice on how to buy costs people big-time dollars, especially first-time home buyers. It is not up to date with the modern economy and the high cost of homes combined with ridiculous, constantly rising rent prices. I know people still think he is the best resource to figure it out. When you are a young person and you are working on getting your finances together, there are not a lot of good resources out there, so your options suck. You have either got the big baller want-to-be influencers giving you investment advice and taking pictures of themselves in front of private jets, the super adult-y high-level finance from financial advisors speaking way over your head, or the super sketchy credit-fixed specialists. You got to be careful. A lot of them are scams and they are trying to take advantage of you. Now you are already freaked out and sketched out when you are trying to find financial help online, so then you start looking around and turning towards the first-time home buyer resources. Your choices get even worse. It is newbies, rookies, part-time realtors, or mortgage pros desperate for a sale and hoping that you can be the client to help them finally get a paycheck or, even worse, to help them figure out how to do their job. What do you do? You turn to reliable Uncle Dave. Dave Ramsey’s over-the-top, ultra-conservative concept of no debt views a whole mortgage as a debt, and all debt is bad. This is where bad meaning bad, not bad meaning good. This has cost his followers tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars. How so? It is something we call equity. Dave likes to play it safe. I call it old school over-simplified. That is a great way for him to run a business, but not necessarily a great way to properly serve so many of you out there that are just trying to figure out a way to dump your rent. It has cost millions of would-be first-time home buyers a chance to buy a home in the last number of years in the right way. Dave Ramsey is great for debt, but horrendous for first-time home buyers. The world has changed and his old school philosophies do not take into account the challenges facing Millennials, Gen Z, and all the first time home buyers out there. Click To Tweet Dave says, “Do not do it when you are broke.” He says that the average renter with an average of $35,000 in savings with four credit cards at an average balance of $5,000 for a total of $20,000 in average debt which pays the average $2,000 a month for their apartment, is broke. Do you feel broke? He says that broke fools should not buy until they pay off 100%of their debt and then they boost their savings to six months of complete reserves and then save up 20% down payment for that average $400,000 home. That is about $90,000 that you have got to save up to cover your down payment or 20% plus your closing costs after you have paid off 100% of all your debt and boosted your savings up to six months.Dave Vs. Dave Round 2
All the while, he says that homes are going to continue to get more expensive and the interest rates will likely rise too. I am going to break down that math, Magic School Bus style, in a minute, but let me explain how I got here. Why am I going into round two? This all started because Madison is my badass from episode 53, the 24-year-old single lady who bought herself a house. She sent me a clip of Dave Ramsey on TikTok. He said, “Summer of 2022 is the best time to buy a home. Prices are going to go up for five years. Do not wait.” When I saw that, my mouth dropped, I could not believe it. I have heard Dave say this before and seen him cost all of his followers tons of money, but I cannot believe he is still saying it. Going back to 2018 on YouTube, over 2 million views on one of Dave Ramsey’s rants back then. He said in 2018, “It was a scorching hot market, but not a bubble.” It’s like what he said about now in 2022. In 2018, he warned all of his disciples not to get carried away and buy a home because the market was so scorching hot back then, pre-pandemic. He said, “Do not buy a home when you are broke. That is why they called them mortgage brokers because they help you stay broke.” He said unless you buy a home his way, you are begging for trouble. Only buy if you follow his baby steps 3.B and get totally out of debt with six months of reserves and a full 20% down payment because PMI is the devil and ever buy on a 30-year mortgage. Always use a 15-year mortgage. That is how to do it right and not go broke. That is what he said. Do you see it? Do you see the fatal flaw? He said all that in what was a rising market. What he said was a scorching hot market, a non-bubble market, and this was pre-pandemic. If that does not sound contradictory to you, keep reading. With the almighty math, it should become very clear to you. Someone in the comments of this video actually said it a lot better than I could. Someone commented on this 2018 video with 2 million likes. I read this and it sounded like one of those documentary testimonials when the producer finds one of the people who got out of the cult and they took an interview with them to hear, “What happened to you?” This is what it sounds like. Read this comment, “I bought my first home at 47. I did still have debt, but not bad.” You had debt? Dave says you are broke.Why I’m Not Just A Dave Ramsey Hater
Does this make sense to you? Do you still think that I am a hater? Let me break this down, math style. It is time for me to get all up in the numbers like Matthew Math Matthews. Do you remember him? He was from The Magic School Bus. Dave Ramsey’s mortgage calculator is a pretty good mortgage calculator. I give him that, but if you go and put in $400,000, the average price for a home, at a 5.5% interest rate, might not be the average by the time this episode drops because rates are going up, but we will use that number. Instantly, it is going to recommend that you put 20% down and you do a 15-year loan. If you try to change it to a 30-year fixed, it straight up tells you right on the calculator, “We only recommend a 15-year loan.” If you do it his way, that is going to show a monthly payment of $3,138 for PITI, but that also includes $86 for an HOA. For this math example, I am going to eliminate the HOA. That $86 throws everything up. We are just going to do the PITI, Principal, Interest, Taxes, and Insurance on a single-family home with no HOA. If you do it Dave’s way, it is $3,052 a month. That is with 20% down and a 15-year fixed loan. You can go Google it right now and run the numbers for yourself. 20% down on $400,000 is $80,000, plus you have to add another $8,000 to $12,000 for closing costs for total all-in of $88,000 to $92,000 on the monthly payment, as I said, $3,052. Now, if you take that same price in the same calculator and change it from a 15-year loan to a 30-year loan, it is $2,254 a month, Principal, Interest, Taxes, and Insurance. That is a difference of $800 a month, but Dave does not want you to do that because then you are going to have debt, and that is a terrible thing. That is just the beginning. It is an $800 difference if you spread this out and if you actually leverage this home payment. I am under the assumption that if you can afford this payment for the next 15 years, you are going to be able to afford it for the next 15 years after that. If $800 a month of savings is the difference between a 30-year loan and a 15-year loan, it means you can get in now before home prices and interest rates keep going up, then maybe you should do that and get the equity. Fear grows in the unknown. Knowledge that reduces that fear. Click To Tweet Let’s see what happens when you put 5% down, which is only going to cost you about $28,000 to $32,000 all-in for your closing costs and your down payment. If you do that and monthly, it is going to cost you $2,753 PITI. What about PMI, the devil? Throw that in for $100 a month and the PMI does not stay on your loan forever. The payment goes up to $2,853 a month. It does not sound much different, but let’s see how it works. You manage your debt and you only save 5% down as opposed to saving 20% down. That is $28,000 to $32,000 to buy. You are going to pay $2,853 a month, which is $200 less than Dave’s 20% down and 15-year loan program. All of that is after, according to Dave’s plan, you have already paid off all your debt down to zero and you have saved six months. That is why I say and the 47-year-old dude from the comments from 2018. This is the cheapest it is going to be in five years. In other posts and comments, Dave said it might be ten years. If you need to save 20% down, what are you going to be paying while you save up? Rent. What is going up? Rent. What is the same about buying with a 30-year fixed with 5% down versus buying with 20% down on a 15-year fixed? The payment is fixed. What is different? The years you take to pay off your debt down to zero, save up to six months, and save up $60,000. That is the difference in the how to buy. It just kills me. In a world of high inflation and rising rents, if you do not explore the alternatives and you are not being conservative, you are just being naive. I say that with love. This is not your fault. You do not make money for anybody who is going to give you the plan to do this correctly. No one is out there building a business to give you this plan. Back in episode 53, I interviewed the 24-year-old Madison, who I talked about earlier, who sent me the first TikTok. Thanks to Dave Ramsey’s teaching because she was a disciple. At 24 years old, she had a ton of money, and she was able to buy her first home just a couple of years out of college. That is awesome. That is great for her. Thanks, Dave, for helping her learn how to save money when she was 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18. She tuned in to the show and then she came to me. After talking with me for a little bit, she figured out, because she is a smart cookie, that she had some alternatives. She found herself in a unicorn bubble. That is the good kind of bubble.What Listening To Dave Ramsey Will Cost You
You are covered either way, but let’s suppose that we do not have to go to episode 98 for a flat and declining market. What if we just have a flat or a slowly rising market and Dave and all the data is correct? Let’s talk about the how you buy and what it is going to cost you if you follow his don’t-go-broke plan. How much are you going to pay in rent to save up that $60,000 that you need to go from 5% to 20% on the purchase? $60,000. That is assuming that you already have the 5%. If you do not have 5% and you are starting from nothing, you have got to rent and follow his plan to save $80,000 for 20% down. For the purposes of this math, let’s say that you have already got the 5% down, so you are sitting there with about $30,000 in the bank, but you listen to Dave, you do not do the 5% down, and you do not buy a house now in 2022 because you do not want to go broke. To get to a 20% down payment, that means over the next three years, you would have to save a minimum of $20,000 a year. That is no easy task. In a world of high inflation and rising rents, if you do not explore the alternatives, you are not being conservative; you are just being naive. Click To Tweet Let’s use this example to show how preposterous this old-school thinking is in this high-rent world. $60,000 in three years is what you have got to save. According to Rent.com, the average two-bedroom is renting for $2,065 a month and has gone up 25.7%. That is crazy. That is over $500 each year, but I will go conservative on that. We will say that your rent at $2,000 comes back at $250 added every year. That is a number that might ring true to a lot of you out there. Even at this half, the actual 25.7% number that came out, the math of your rent going up to $250 a year is still no bueno for Uncle Dave’s plan. If rents go up to $250 a month each year for the next three years, then you are going to pay $3,000 more next year, $6,000 in two years, and $9,000 the third year for a total of $18,000 extra that you are going to have to pay while you are trying to save up to get that 20%. You would not have had to pay it if you bought it because you would have locked into a fixed loan amount. I love home ownership. It is locked. That is one important little piece of information that Dave neglects to tell you. It is about the whole awful mortgage is bad and it is a debt thing, so compare that to rent and how rents have been going. That locked payment kicks booty over this modern rising non-fixed rent world that we live in. I have been screaming this since 2011. I said the market was going to come back, and the rents were going to keep rising, but I did not have a national show yet. The only person that was watching those YouTube videos were my local clients and maybe family if my mom and dad could figure out how to use YouTube. The point is not only are you saving up, but you have got to pay an extra $18,000 in rent while you are trying to save up $60,000, and home prices and interest rates are all going up. Your rent is being paid out to nothing. I do not think that is what Ms. Frizzle meant when she said, “Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy.” I cannot be clearer than that. You have to save $20,000 a year for three years, plus the extra $18,000 that you have paid in rent, making that total $60,000 plus $18,000. The last time I checked, that is $78,000 that you will have to save while you are trying to sit there and make the smart purchase, according to Dave. One more thing. In those three years that you are trying to save $78,000 while you are paying rent goes to nothing, and if you had bought instead of owning that place, your monthly fixed payment would have paid down the principal on that home by $16,239. That is you putting payment into an asset. The sooner you own, the sooner you are paying down the mortgage. There are simple facts here. Renting goes to nothing. Owning even in the first few years, when you are paying lots of interest on your payment, you are still going to be paying down your mortgage. On a $400,000 loan in those first three years, you are going to be paying it down $16,239. That principal reduction will increase every year because the interest is up top and just a little bit of principal. Every year, it shifts and you pay more and more principal.Who Is Dave For And Who Is Dave Not For
What really sucks in my extrapolation calculation that is sweeping the nation is that it was not sweeping the nation back in 2015. Back then, it was just Uncle Dave. Dave Ramsey was telling all the people what to do to be safe and not be broke. Instead, he caused them hundreds of thousands of dollars. He sidelined thousands of potential homeowners and strapped them into a rent cycle when they could have been earning equity, costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars in their financial portfolio. I love him for helping people get out of debt, but I am super bummed and do not like everything that I just talked about. I do not agree with his prehistoric old-school principles. To all of you that are thinking that buying a home is risky, all those who are listening to Uncle Dave and thinking that right now, you just need to hold off. I extrapolated and did all the math and data for you. The safe, conservative guru, Dave, says that the market is not going to go down for five years. Even he says the best time to buy is now because it is going to be going up for the next 5 to 10 years. Dave, will not like to hear this, but let’s get these people looking for answers in the entire picture. If you are going to tell them, “Now is the time to buy,” give them every option, like the how. I have been saying it since 2011. I am no genius. I wish to sell the houses in an area where it is freaking expensive. I had to research the how for young Gen X-ers and Millennials. Now, I am trying to do it for the Gen Zs. I had to find a way to help people fight the rising rents and still be safe. I have been advising people to buy with a 3.5% or 5% down with one of those loan programs. I have been advising people to use it for decades. For some of my super scaredy-cats who had 20%, I even told them maybe they should look at a 5% down and put the extra 15% into a money market account. What is the worst thing that can happen? You can always pay down your principal anytime you want to. You have got the money right there and it is liquid.Important Links
- Episode 69 – Dave Ramsey Is Dead Wrong When It Comes To Buying Your First Home In 2022 and Beyond
- Episode 53 – Real Story From A Real First-Time Homebuyer – Madisons Story
- Episodes 29 – How Do I Time My Home Purchase If A Recession Is Coming
- Episode 38 – Housing Forecast 2021 For First-Time Home Buyers
- Episode 40 – Should I Buy My First Home Now, or Wait? Question of the Week
- Episode 47 – Is This A Housing Bubble Ready To Burst?
- Episode 57 – It Will Cost You Much More To Wait For Things To Cool Down
- Episode 67 – How High Inflation Is Affecting First-Time Home Buyers?
- Episode 68 – 2022 Housing Market Forecast For First-Time Home Buyers
- Episode 70 – Urgent 2022 Housing Market Update For First-Time Home Buyers
- Episode 73 – Emergency Information Again On 2022 Bidding Wars and Your Realtor Representation
- Episode 74 – The Bubble Bursting and a Market Crash and What To Do as a First-Time Home Buyer
- Episode 75 – Inspection Red Flags New Tips For 2022 Bidding Wars And To Wait Or Not To Wait
- Episode 84 – 2022 Crucial Market Update And Bidding War Winning Stories
- Episode 92 – Is The Crazy 2022 Housing Market Changing?
- Episode 93 – Truth Bombs On The Housing Market Bubble Watch Or Ride The Wave
- Episode 101 – Google Searches For Housing Bubble Has Been Spiking
- Episode 98 – Time For A New Game Plan To Buy Your First Home My Story
- Rent.com
- @DavidSidoni – Instagram
- @HowToBuyAHome – TikTok
- How To Buy A Home Podcast – YouTube
This podcast was started for YOU, to demystify things for first time home buyers, and help crush the confusion. After helping first timers for over 13 years, I knew there wasn’t t a lot of clear, tangible, useable information out there on the internet, so I started this podcast. Help me spread the word to other people just like you, dying for answers. Tell your friends, family, and perhaps that random neighbor you REALLY want to move out about How to Buy a Home! A really easy way is to hit the share button and text it to your friends. Go for it, help someone out. And if you’re not already a regular listener, subscribe and get constant updates on the market. If you are a regular and learned something, help me help others – give the show a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, or write a review on Spotify. Let’s change the way the real estate industry treats you first time buyers, one buyer at a time, starting with you – and make sure your favorite people don’t get screwed by going into this HUGE step blind and confused. Viva la Unicorn Revolution!
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