Dave Ramsey on the financial crisis

This isn’t a polital blog, and I’m definitely not a political kind of girl. I don’t even watch the news, and I often joke that Iron Man is my news reporter. However, I would have to live under a rock to not know something about the financial crisis that is all the talk these days. Admittedly, I didn’t understand it all at first, but Iron Man patiently drew me a visual diagram explaining how it all happened and the repercussions, and I get it. (Thanks, Honey!)  I hope to persuade him to do a blog post explaining it to anyone else out there whose head is spinning – or better yet, to make a nice little video, drawing the diagram out like he did for me.

Discouraged by all that is going on, and having concern for how our family will be affected, I decided to read up on what Dave Ramsey had to say about it. For those that haven’t heard of Dave Ramsey, just go to his website and take a look around. Or order his book, Total Money Makeover. Or find a local station where you can listen to him. Seriously. You need to hear/read/see this guy. He is fantastic, and his methods are what helped our family get rid of debt. We now have no debt but our mortgage, and we are working to get that paid off early too, hopefully before our oldest child is college age.

But I digress. I trust that this guy knows his stuff, which led me to find out what he was saying about the financial situation of the US, the implications, and what people like us should be doing to guard our future.  I found Dave’s “rant,” as he called it, here. His words were surprisingly encouraging to Iron Man and me. Given, our country is still in a great big mess, but I came away from reading this feeling that it’s going to be okay. The text is quoted below:

YOU Fix You: What it takes for us all to overcome the crazy economy

By and large, 70% to 90% of you wanted something to be done to calm the economy, but you didn’t want $700 billion in new debt to bail out Wall Street. The stock market has had record declines since then. What’s going on?

You need to remember that you need to take control of your life.

It’s disturbing that people in government totally disregard what their constituents tell them to do. It’s disturbing that the market goes down and the media panics about this. It’s disturbing that greedy banks made horrible, high-interest loans to people who couldn’t afford to repay, and broke people signed up for the loan and cried when they couldn’t afford it – like someone did something to them. It’s disturbing that arrogant people in Washington ignore their constituents and takes huge strides toward socialism.

All of these things are disturbing, but none will cause this great nation to cease to function. None of these things are the seeds to the beginning of the end. You’re okay. We’re going to be fine.

But the most disturbing thing is some people’s reactions.

Don’t react based on fear or panic. Another negative reaction is that you are looking to Washington to fix your problems. Why would you do that? They have never fixed your problems, and you want Obama or McCain to fix things. That’s ridiculous; there has never been a president who can fix your problems. They always say they can and they never can.

At what point did Bill Clinton fix any of your problems? At what point did he cause you to prosper? At what point did George Bush end your career or cause you to prosper? When did Ronald Reagan fix your problems?

When you look to Washington to solve your problems, we’ve got the seeds to destroy this country. It’s time for YOU to change YOUR life.

There was a sweet 43-year-old lady making $15,000 a year who called me asking what Congress was going to do to help her. My answer to her was “Nothing. It’s not their job. It’s your job to read a book or take a class to get better so you can make more. Why have you accepted this as your lot in life? Why are you sitting around waiting on Congress or president to fix your life?”

It’s not Washington’s job to fix what’s going on with you. If you are waiting on Washington to change something, you’ve got a long freakin’ wait! It is YOUR job to take care of you. Don’t sit around and watch TV and panic and think you can’t do anything. I’ve made and lost money, and every bit of that had to do with me being smart and diligent or stupid.

Quit blaming Congress or looking to them to fix you. YOU have to fix you! When you wait on the government to fix your life and wait for money to be taken from others and given to you, that’s a spirit of envy, and it’s wrong. The only system that works is capitalism functioning under moral restraint.

Get some moral restraint, become a capitalist, and go be somebody!