My review of the Dave Ramsey Debtor Education course

[PaKettle]

My wife and I still had to do the pre-discharge (post-341) debtor education class, and I had heard that Dave Ramsey's was one in which one might actually learn something worthwhile, so I shelled out the $45 and we took his course online.

First of all, I had trouble signing up for it because I use Firefox as my browser. Although the site says it can be used with Firefox, the payment page would not work, and I had to switch over to the Internet Explorer browser. Whether the actual video plays on Firefox, I don't know because I figured if I had to go to IE to sign up I may as well use IE to view the video.

The 2nd thing I was not pleased with is that the size of the video is about 1/8th the size of my 21" screen. It does not have an "enlarge" or "full screen" option. The site says that if you want to see it larger you must go into your control panel and change your screen resolution settings. While this is not difficult to do, the last time I did it my monitor freaked out and took me quite a bit to get it working right again, so I did not want to risk it, and you may not either. Thus, we had to watch the video in a size of about 6"x5".

These 2 problems above can be forgiven. The first one is somewhat common (that Firefox will not work with some web sites) and the 2nd one is something that most people can probably resolve fairly easily by changing their screen resolution settings.

However, the next problem we encountered was something I felt "ripped off" about. Nowhere in the description of the course was a booklet mentioned - you only find this out after you pay for the course. As it turns out, there is an 80-page .pdf booklet that comes with the course, that ideally you need to refer to as you follow along with the video. This booklet has blanks you need to fill in (with pen on paper, not on screen with your keyboard!) which help you answer the questions at the end of each chapter, so without it you may find answering the questions a bit difficult.

The problem is that I really did not want to waste 80 pages of ink on this, and had I known this was part of the deal I may not have signed up. As I said, it is not mentioned anywhere in the description of the course. I assumed it was just all video.

Now, some may consider that the booklet is a good thing - something you get for your $45. I agree that getting an informative booklet would be a good thing. However, about half to 2/3 of the pages are really not informative, they are pretty much "filler". Had they condensed the booklet down to just the necessary pages, say 15 pages or so, I would gladly have printed it out and used it, but as it was it seemed like a waste of ink. It seems like a case of Ramsey trying to fool you into thinking you are getting something valuable ("an 80 page booklet!") when in fact the booklet could easily have been condensed to 10-15 pages for the purposes of the video and the quizzes.

As it was, we downloaded the booklet (.pdf format) and kept cutting back and forth from the video to the booklet on screen. This was rather awkward and had I known how much the booklet would be referred to I'd probably have bitten the bullet and printed the booklet, at least the pages that weren't pure graphics and such. I think it would behoove Ramsey to offer a version of the booklet that is much shorter and condensed so as to not waste a lot of the viewers' ink. And what if the viewer does not have a printer or does not have ink left over? Again, this was not described before signing up for the course.

Okay, so the course itself:
It consists of 12 parts. It shows only 8 parts when you first look at the course description, but that does not include the Opening Session, the Orientation, a "Part 2" to one of the parts, and a Conclusion.

Each part is anywhere between 5 to 15 minutes, I'd say. I did not time them but I can tell you that some of the parts seemed interminably long. Our biggest complaint, other than the above technical problems, was that the course is just plain too long. It took us somewhere around 3 hours to watch it. It does tell you that, somewhere, but it's not real obvious, so I am telling you here. In fact, none of these things are made obvious in the description of the course. It's almost as if Ramsey wants to keep you in the dark about waht the course actually consists of. Seems like an advocate for the people, as he claims to be, would want to give the people all the information so they can make an informed decision.

The videos are divided as follows:
A. Opening Session
B. Orientation
1: Super Savers
2: Cash Flow Planning
3: Dumping Debt (2 parts)
4: Real Estate & Mortgages
5: Buyer Beware
6: Big, Big Bargins
7: Understanding Insurance
8: Credit Bureaus
Closing Session

The course itself is as interesting and entertaining as a financial course could be. My only complaint is that it could be cut down to about 2/3 as long as it is, especially the Opening session, orientation and closing session. Also, the mortgage and insurance sections, it seems, could be optional for those who want to watch them. He goes into great detail on insurance. While I did learn from this, it went on way too long and I think in general, all the lessons could be edited and streamlined.

Overall, it is an informative, worthwhile course. I did learn quite a bit about insurance that I did not know, I learned something about mortgages, and I learned the advantages of not having credit card debt, and how to budget our income so as to use cash for everything, and the importance of having an emergency fund.

All in all, I will give the course a B-. I could have given it an A if it had been at least 1/3 shorter, and the booklet had been condensed to about 10-15 pages instead of 80, making it easier to print out, and if he made the video viewable with Windows Media Player so that one could easily resize it to one's preference. I don't think these things are too much to ask and they also are not difficult to achieve.

I also want to reiterate that Ramsey should describe the course more accurately so that the consumer knows exactly what he is getting: how long it is, that he needs to print an 80 page booklet, that he may need to adjust his screen resolution, and so on.

I have nothing to compare it to - I have not taken any of the other Debtor Education course - so it's difficult to say if I recommend it or not. Maybe other ones are just as over-long and have just as many technical problems.

One thing I will say is that it appears to me that this course was just edited out of Ramsey's Financial Peace University course which he also sells. In other words, except for the Closing segment, which appears to be videotaped in a studio, whereas the rest of it is him live on stage in front of an audience, this course was not produced for the purpose of a Debtor Education course. Rather, it was like Ramsey or someone in his organization said, "Hey, how about if we take the "Financial Peace" course and edit parts of it out and create a Debtor Education Course? That is why I think it is overly long and not made as well as it could have been. If he wanted to offer a really good Debtor Education course I think he should produce one from scratch, not use a bastardized version of his other course.

I guess I just expected more from the guy so many tout as a great financial guru.

[ameliabedilia]

Great review!
I will add to yours if you don't mind. I actually do have something to compare it to since I took a financial course for myself using the course from incharge foundation. I had already gotten started before I realized that this was not a course we could both take together and each get a certificate. So, I decided to use Dave Ramsey for my husbands certificate.

As for Dave Ramsey's length and all the others, I believe they have to be AT LEAST 2 hours long by law. So, Pa- you are out of luck no matter what you choose .

My screen did have an option to make the screen bigger, but he irritates me a little, so having him tiny was fine by me. Maybe it has something to do with your browser?

My biggest complaint about the technical stuff on his course, was that you can't rewind the video a little, you have to start each segment over. I missed something when my daughter came in the room crying and I tried to rewind it a few moments and got stuck with it starting over and having to hear it for 15 minutes.

I did not even attempt to print any of the forms except the monthly cash flow plan and I was irritated with that because it printed the sample plans too which I didn't want.

I do like his philosophy on credit and how we really don't need it. This might be because he says not to care about the fico score so much, and I know mine is going to be terrible . I also liked that his was pretty applicable to real life- We actually do need to buy a new car soon and I had been looking at new ones, and after watching his course, I felt much more confident in looking at only 3-4 year old cars. Also making myself sign up for the 3 or 4 year financing instead of the 5 year and telling myself that I will pay extra each month when I know I won't!

I think I would rate it about a b as well. It did go by quicker for me than the other course.

Now, for the review of the second course. This was probably more run of the mill than the Dave Ramsey course. You do the little lessons and if you go through them too quick and try to take the quiz, it tells you that you haven't spent enough time on the module and you have to go back and sit and look at the clock on the computer. I actually score pretty bad on a few of the quizes and had to go back to retake some of them, so I guess I did learn something about debt and budgeting. This course was pretty generic and it did take two hours at least.

[erinmi]

Well, we are about 1/3 of the way through Dave Ramsey's course. And yes, I agree that the screen option is not great. I also have an issue with the payment process as I couldn't get my debit card to process on the site (it kept saying declined even though I triple checked our account balance and numbers) and then somehow they processed it through 3 times and I am still waiting for my $90 refund a week later- which is not cool when you are short on cash, and no longer using credit!

I'm fairly familiar with Ramsey's ideas as we attempted the "Total Money Makeover" before we ended up even further in the hole with a short sale. We hemmed and hawed for a long time about whether or not to keep trying that before we realized it would take us over 7 years to even get towards the bottom of list of debts, and decided to file instead.

I will update after we finish watching the course with the rest of my opinion Now to get DH around to watch the videos (I know we can watch them separately but he may never get it done if I don't make him watch with me!)

[PaKettle]

Glad to see I was not the only one with some complaints about it.
As to the other site taking 2 hours, I'm almost positive the Ramsey course took THREE hours, and I wrote them stating that in my opinion it SHOULD be closer to 2 hours.

As to the button on your browser that said you could make the picture bigger, did you try it? Because yes, there was a button in my browser, but when you click on it , it merely tells you to go into the Control Panel of your computer and adjust your screen resolution. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that is the only way to enlarge the video.

Thanks for mentioning the fact that you cannot rewind the video. That was yet another problem I forgot to mention in my review!

My afterthought on all this is that there must be a better debtor education than this one, out there. I am NOT recommending it. Too many problems.

[Lindsay]

I was planning on taking this course. I notice that it is also offered as a DVD/workbook mailed to you. This may work out better with the small screen issue. Of course, this option is more money than the online version. I actually like Dave Ramsey and try to listen to his show everyday while I do my office work so I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy the course. I did try to do his plan, but realized that we were far too gone. Was the actual material pretty decent or was it really, really boring? Usually his show and books are pretty interesting to me, but the bankruptcy course may not be.

[imbroke2]

We went through our trustee's office and took the course. It was FREE, was about 2 hours long and we got the book. Their take on it was we are offering it to you for free since you are in BK after all.

[PaKettle]

I was planning on taking this course. I notice that it is also offered as a DVD/workbook mailed to you. This may work out better with the small screen issue. Of course, this option is more money than the online version. I actually like Dave Ramsey and try to listen to his show everyday while I do my office work so I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy the course. I did try to do his plan, but realized that we were far too gone. Was the actual material pretty decent or was it really, really boring? Usually his show and books are pretty interesting to me, but the bankruptcy course may not be.

If you like Ramsey, I'd say you will find the course somewhat informative and worthwhile.

If you can afford the dvd/booklet that is probably the best way to go, considering the technical problems. If you don't mind printing out the 80 page booklet and don't mind seeing the video at about 1/8th screen size then do it online.

The information in the course is pretty decent and as I mentioned in my review, it seems to be just "edited out of" the Financial Peace University course that he sells for a lot of money. Probably touches on all the main points of that related to debt and budgeting.

You also get a free month of the $9.95/month service he sells on his web site (at least I did). I'm not exactly sure if that is worth much, or not.

[Lindsay]

Pa,
I used to be a member of the 9.95 service when I still had hope of avoiding bankruptcy. There are some very active forums for the members and they are very anti-bankruptcy as you may imagine. However, the threads have very good information on saving money and frugality and were generally interesting to read. Sometimes I'd cringe though when someone would post the most horrendous debt situation (like 150K debt and getting sued by several creditors) and everyone would try to get them to avoid BK. I guess sometimes a person is just BK and there isn't anything else to do.

If I had found Dave Ramsey several years ago, I'd probably be okay today. I was hoping to save the money by using the debt class online but a tiny screen would make me go totally insane so I guess I'll have to fork out the money for the home study DVD set.

I'm actually hoping that watching it will make an impact on my husband and that he will try to become a little more ambitious and proactive in our financial situation.

[PaKettle]

Pa,
I used to be a member of the 9.95 service when I still had hope of avoiding bankruptcy. There are some very active forums for the members and they are very anti-bankruptcy as you may imagine. However, the threads have very good information on saving money and frugality and were generally interesting to read. Sometimes I'd cringe though when someone would post the most horrendous debt situation (like 150K debt and getting sued by several creditors) and everyone would try to get them to avoid BK. I guess sometimes a person is just BK and there isn't anything else to do.

If I had found Dave Ramsey several years ago, I'd probably be okay today. I was hoping to save the money by using the debt class online but a tiny screen would make me go totally insane so I guess I'll have to fork out the money for the home study DVD set.

I'm actually hoping that watching it will make an impact on my husband and that he will try to become a little more ambitious and proactive in our financial situation.

I'm not sure why Ramsey's followers would be anti-bankrutpcy... What is the rationale for that? Seems to me that the whole idea is getting into a sound financial lifestyle, and certainly filing bankruptcy is a good way to do that when you're over your head in debt! You can get solvent and "ahead", save your emergency fund up, and so on, much faster by filing bankruptcy than by paying off all that credit card debt!

Makes no sense to me. I'd probably go on there and argue with people about that! ;-)

[jbr12]

How can I find out with the Dave Ramsey course is approved for my state? I went to the US DOJ website for my district and it only lists a handful of places, none of which have ever been mentioned on this site....

Anyone in Michigan have any suggestions for a quick and fairly cheap post-341 counseling program?

***Never mind... I was looking at the credit counseling part of the US DOJ webpage, not the Debtor Education list

[Lindsay]

I'm not sure why Ramsey's followers would be anti-bankrutpcy... What is the rationale for that? Seems to me that the whole idea is getting into a sound financial lifestyle, and certainly filing bankruptcy is a good way to do that when you're over your head in debt! You can get solvent and "ahead", save your emergency fund up, and so on, much faster by filing bankruptcy than by paying off all that credit card debt!

Makes no sense to me. I'd probably go on there and argue with people about that! ;-)

I think it's because Ramsey himself is so anti-bankruptcy. Even though he filed 20 years ago, he did pay back all of his creditors in full afterwards. I listen to the show everyday and people will ask if they should file bankruptcy and I've never heard him tell them too. He'll say they aren't bankrupt and they need to sell their cars/homes and eat beans and rice. I like Dave Ramsey, but I do disagree with this. I think that sometimes people are really bankrupt. We could sell our home and car and we'd still be bankrupt. I think bankruptcy is a great option if you are in over your head. The collection calls are enough to make someone insane.

I do think his way is too simple sometimes. We all know that overspending is bad, but its not so easy to stop doing it. We know smoking is bad, but its hard to quit.

I'm not sure in today's economy that its so easy to stay financially fit. We paid $3.59 for gas last Friday. We have cut our food budget to the bare minimum, eating mostly cheap meatless meals. Eggs used to be under a dollar a dozen a year ago and now they are 2.25 (the store brand). Everything has went up. I keep careful track of prices and alot of things that I buy at Walmart just went up 20%+ in one week. Things I paid $1.00 for last week were $1.29 this week and they were generic brands with no sale involved. I'm not sure what will happen. We live in an area that has limited job opportunities. It was 6 degrees last night and I had my furnace down to 60 degrees. I freeze all winter and the heating bill is still $300 each month. My eBay business is in the toilet because alot of people don't have extra money for non-essential purchases right now.

Now the government says the economy is sluggish; I guess all of us "little people" knew that for the last year or more.

[PaKettle]

I think it's because Ramsey himself is so anti-bankruptcy. Even though he filed 20 years ago, he did pay back all of his creditors in full afterwards. I listen to the show everyday and people will ask if they should file bankruptcy and I've never heard him tell them too. He'll say they aren't bankrupt and they need to sell their cars/homes and eat beans and rice. I like Dave Ramsey, but I do disagree with this. I think that sometimes people are really bankrupt. We could sell our home and car and we'd still be bankrupt. I think bankruptcy is a great option if you are in over your head. The collection calls are enough to make someone insane.

I do think his way is too simple sometimes. We all know that overspending is bad, but its not so easy to stop doing it. We know smoking is bad, but its hard to quit.

I'm not sure in today's economy that its so easy to stay financially fit. We paid $3.59 for gas last Friday. We have cut our food budget to the bare minimum, eating mostly cheap meatless meals. Eggs used to be under a dollar a dozen a year ago and now they are 2.25 (the store brand). Everything has went up. I keep careful track of prices and alot of things that I buy at Walmart just went up 20%+ in one week. Things I paid $1.00 for last week were $1.29 this week and they were generic brands with no sale involved. I'm not sure what will happen. We live in an area that has limited job opportunities. It was 6 degrees last night and I had my furnace down to 60 degrees. I freeze all winter and the heating bill is still $300 each month. My eBay business is in the toilet because alot of people don't have extra money for non-essential purchases right now.

Now the government says the economy is sluggish; I guess all of us "little people" knew that for the last year or more.

I think it's somewhat hypocritical of Ramsey to be so anti-bankruptcy yet sell post-banrkuptcy video course specifically to Ch. 7 filers.

I also think it is just plain STUPID not to file bankruptcy when you are legally qualified as bankrupt.

Yeah, gas prices are killing us all. I luckily only drive a short distance to work but I'm filling up my car for $40 now when it used to be about $17! For people who commute an hour or so to work - and many commute even further than that where I work! - I don't know how they are getting by.

I bought bread the other day and many of the good ones - 100% whole wheat, which is what we buy; no point buying white bread devoid of any nutritional value - are around $4 a loaf! I bought a pint of non-hormone half and half for $3! (Admittedly this was an organic brand which is not what we usually buy, and at a higher-than-most store, but still...)

[Lindsay]

I agree it is hypocritical of him. When we realized that we were in deep financial trouble, I could find no reasons NOT to file for bankruptcy. We were going to be able to keep our house and car. The only thing we would lose would be a mountain of debt at 30% interest (that we had been trying to pay down for over 10 years already and getting nowhere), 100's of daily collection calls and some pride. Our once perfect credit is already shot so BK isn't going to hurt it much worse. We don't intend to rebuild our credit and we already have a house, so I could care less about our FICO score at this point.

I've heard people call into the show with 100,000 in credit card debt and he tells them they aren't bankrupt. I realize that his show is all about "having hope", but I truly feel that for alot of people, bankruptcy is their only hope. I do like his show and listen to him everyday while I do my college homework and eBay listings. I don't have a television in my office so it livens things up a bit while I work! I get jittery when the house is too quiet (LOL, I was raised in a very chaotic home when I was young). I like to hear the people call in and talk about their problems. I do like alot of Dave Ramsey's philosophies and I think if I had found him 10 years ago, I probably could have avoided bankruptcy. I do plan on doing his plan after the BK, like the baby steps. I want to have some financial peace. This has been a nightmare for the past 10 years.