Dingus of the week: Dave Ramsey

Turns out the real financial peace was scams all along

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This week, a federal court ruled that the company owned by financial guru Dave Ramsey has to face trial for religious discrimination. Ramsey’s company, the Lampo Group, which does business as Ramsey Solutions, allegedly discriminated against an employee, Brad Amos, for wanting to follow CDC-recommended safety measures in 2020. 

Amos alleges that, during the height of the pandemic, Ramsey ridiculed Covid fears and called people who followed safety measures “wusses” and said that wearing a mask and social distancing went against “the will of God.” The company mandated that employees come to the office and refused to let them wear masks or follow other safety measures, according to the lawsuit.

Amos counters that his religion taught him to care for others. Having been fired, he says for taking Covid precautions (the company says his firing was the result of poor performance), he sued the Lampo Group for religious discrimination. 

It turns out the Lampo Group has been sued for many other reasons too. One is that Ramsey allegedly fired a pregnant employee because she wasn’t married and that violated his company’s “righteous living” rules, which stipulate that employees can’t have premarital sex. 

And as if it weren’t troubling enough that Dave Ramsey is policing the sex lives of his employees, it’s important to know that his rules stipulate that while penetrative sex is off-limits, oral sex outside of marriage is fine. And now I have a lot of questions about whether this means Dave Ramsey is really pro-lesbian. (Turns out he’s not; he settled another lawsuit after firing an employee who came out as a lesbian.)

Okay, is Dave Ramsey a fan of fixing the orgasm gap? 

“What are Dave Ramsey’s thoughts on pegging?” is a thought that I just had and now I need to shower for 40 days and 40 nights. God just read that last sentence and thought, “Okay, time for another flood because y’all need more than Jesus. You need a chemical bath.”

Dave Ramsey sitting down to decide whether or not it’s okay that his employees have sex and what kind of sex is a very normal and not at all creepy thing for a man to do. It’s giving Mike Johnson and his son monitoring each other’s porn usage.

Another reason Ramsey has been sued? His company’s involvement in a shady time-share exit company. The company, Timeshare Exit Team, offered to help people get out of their time-shares and offered a money-back guarantee. Turns out, it didn’t help people get out of their time-shares and did not honor their money-back guarantee. 

I guess Ramsey’s mantra, “Live like no one else, so you can live like no one else” translates to live like no one else so you can get sued like no one else.

Ramsey rose to prominence as a part of a wave of money gurus all promising to help Americans crushed by debt from the housing market. Keep in mind that the debt saddled on consumers by the housing market was a direct result of corporate greed and financial speculation. It wasn’t that people were irresponsible, but that they were being sold scammy mortgages they’d never be able to keep up with. And Ramsey himself made money off flipping houses, which contributed to the problem of housing that has made it so unaffordable. 

Unless you are already rich, investing in real estate involves taking on a lot of debt, so Ramsey’s a real “do as I say, not as I do” kind of a guy. 

In 1992 Ramsey began giving financial advice on the radio; in 1994, he created his Financial Peace University — a Christian version of financial advice. He was like your mean dad telling you that your student loan debt is your fault because he went to college for $10,000 a year and doesn’t know why you are whining.

Ramsey sold his brand of no-nonsense, no-debt advice with the permission and blessing of pastors. I think Jesus, who literally flipped tables because people had turned temples into places of commerce, would like a word here. Ramsey personally profits off the system that cripples people with debt in the first place. Dave Ramsey is like if the CEO of Marlboro was your cancer doctor. 

For a long time, I was married to a person who followed Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace plan and let me tell you, I know that advice firsthand: “Stop going out to eat” and “Pay less for non-essentials” mean more work for the wife. Because who do you think is cooking more? Couponing more? Stretching the shampoo and going with less? Dave Ramsey thinks haircuts and makeup are non-essentials, and who does this hurt the most? Whose labor is not being valued here? When you have two cars and sell one, who has to do the extra running around and mental load of planning to make sure everyone gets where they need to go?

Beware the male financial gurus who build their empires on the backs of the uncompensated labor of women.

Ramsey then made more money charging people for advice, endorsed by pastors, that holds little meaning in a world run by credit ratings, unaffordable housing, stagnant wages. Using this money he built a company that simply cannot stop getting sued for discriminating and being creepy.

So, I guess the real financial peace was just scams all along.

Has Dave Ramsey thought about canning tomatoes to pay for all his settlements? 

Hey Dave, I have some advice: Start taking on some extra jobs so you can pay down your smallest lawsuit debts first.

Have you considered not buying avocado toast, Dave? Maybe that will help.

Also, audio surfaced yesterday of former DOTW winner JD Vance agreeing that the purpose of “the postmenopausal female” was to watch children.

Sorry, sir, but…

The purpose of a postmenopausal female is to rescue a writer from a car crash, then keep him captive until he fixes the ending to his novel.

The purpose of a postmenopausal female is to poison the black-eyed peas and help you hide Earl’s body.

The purpose of a postmenopausal female is to form a First Wives Club and seek revenge on the men who left them for younger women.

The purpose of a postmenopausal female is to tell you the day before your wedding that she doesn’t know who your father is and it could be one of three men, but she doesn’t really care which because she’s more interested in singing ABBA songs.

The purpose of a postmenopausal female is to live with her three best friends in Miami having wacky adventures, seducing men, and living out her golden years without ever knowing what a JD Vance even is.

THE DELIGHTENMENT

Paying subscribers of this newsletter get access to the Flyover Politics Discord, which is an online community run by me and Garrett Bucks of The White Pages. And the people on that Discord are simply the best. Every week on Thursdays, I ask people to weigh in on who can be DOTW and share any good news. This week people had more good news than dingus complaints. The result was an avalanche of good news for which friend of the newsletter Caitlin coined for new term “delightenment” to describe an overwhelming amount of good news. This community also came up with the term the “dingularity” to describe the epic dingusry of a person or event that sucks so much life and meaning from the world that it becomes a black hole of idiocy.

And I have to say, it is indeed nice to have weeks of delightenment over dingularity. So let’s get down to it, because you probably need a palate-cleanser after I made you think about Dave Ramsey and pegging.

Mattie Khan has this lovely story of a dog who found his son. 

Mariska Hargitay is working to clear rape kit backlogs. It would be nice if our government actually did this. But okay, thank you, Captain Olivia Benson.

Boxer Imane Khelif is suing Elon Musk and JK Rowling for online harassment. Get their asses, Imane. I hope she sues them so hard she ends up with sole custody of Harry and Hermione and he who shall not be correctly named. By which I mean Twitter.

Also filed under “Get their asses”: Elon Musk’s daughter, Vivian, took to Threads to call out Musk and his biographer Walter Isaacson in an absolutely blistering critique. 

I don’t love that the Court of Arbitration for Sport is trying to take away Jordan Chiles’ medal, but I do love how hard USA Gymnastics is fighting for her. Leave Jordan alone, you monsters. If you want to know more about the move to stripe Chiles of her medal, the Washington Post has a good analysis.

If American women were their own country they would have won the third most medals at the Olympics.

Big win this week for the Crooked Media Union. And we love to see it.

Ilhan Omar won her primary!

Kristen Arnett has a new novel ready for pre-order!! HUGE NEWS FOR ARNETT HEADS!

In some hyper-local good news, in Des Moines, community members worked together to delay the passing of an ordinance that would criminalize homelessness. Being unhoused is not a crime and I would simply like the mayor of Des Moines to be less of a dingus.

What I am drinking

As my marathon training ramps up, I’ve been cutting back on drinking. Also I am getting close to 42 and booze absolutely ruins my sleep these days.

But last Saturday, I took my kids to see a local production of the play Puffs. Before the play, we had a wonderful dinner with our friends, Rob, Matteo, and Keaton. Rob and Matteo have quickly become my kids' favorite people thanks to their liberal use of glitter, bubble guns, and the fact that they treat my kids like full human beings with thoughts and opinions worthy of consideration. And as a parent, I cannot tell you how much this means to me, and as a human it means even more.

So much of the discourse this week has involved weighing in on people’s choices to have children and dividing the world into the selfless parents and the selfish childless. So, I want to take a moment to say how much I value my friends who do not have children. I love them not because of the care work they do for me, but because they are delightful humans. But I would not be honest if I said I didn’t rely on their advice, insight, and kindness. My friend Molly who took my daughter to swim practice when I was sitting in the ER with my son. Keaton, who is my son’s idol. And Rob and Matteo who invite me and my kids to the theater and take Buzzfeed quizzes with us and listen to my son’s thoughts about cherries in Shirley Temples, and side with my daughter in her complaints about how out of touch I am.

So much of my life as a single mom who lives far away from family has meant building a new kind of community for myself, one that is bigger and wider and brighter and more spacious than the world I had before. And being able to have a night out with friends, who include my kids, and delight in them. Well, it means everything.

I don’t understand these small mean little worlds that are built to exclude rather than include. I can tell you my life is better because of the Sour Patch Kids, the glitter, the bubble guns, and the friendship, and I don’t know how I lived without them.

So this week, I’m drinking Shirley Temples and toasting to all my friends without children. I’d be lost without you.