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A Good Post by Ramit at IWillTeachYoutobeRich
By JLP | October 24, 2007
Most of the time, Ramit and I see eye-to-eye. This post, An Annoying Email I Got, is no exception. The email Ramit received:
This is nothing personal against you, because every personal finance author I’ve read says the same thing, but your advice is not for real people like me. The “spend less, save more” theory is great for singles or young married couples with no kids (and therefore, fewer attachments, expenses, etc.) I’m 30 years old, married, with two children. I make a very good wage for a 30-year old, but after a mortgage, two car payments, a wife who is a full-time student herself, daycare, and (many) other various utilities, activities, etc. there’s not much left for saving.
Granted, things will be better in a couple years when my wife is done with school and we’re back to being a dual income household. But all you personal finance gurus are people who have graduated from Stanford (or some other 1st tier school) and worked your way into a high paying, high end job. You represent about 0.01% of the population. Not that I hold that against you–I wish I had been that successful. But I need some other strategies to help me get my finances in order.
Ramit’s response is classic. You can always count on Ramit to tell you EXACTLY how he feels!
Topics: Blogging | 3 Comments »
October 25th, 2007 at 12:20 am
my response woulda been it’s not what you make. it’s what you save.
October 26th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
One thing that isn’t clear from the emails is whether the guy is putting his wife through medical school without taking on debt. I have a friend that did this, in BOTH directions, in that the husband put his wife through optometry school and the wife put her husband through dental school after she graduated. They lived very frugally for about eight years while doing this, but ended up with thriving practices, no debt, and enough cash flow to buy a small medical office building and have their offices next to each other.
If he’s doing this, he’s actually doing well. But if he’s taking on a ton of med-school debt while sucking up all the other debt, he’ll be ages digging himself out.
October 29th, 2007 at 11:03 am
That is an excellent post… Thanks for linking it.
Bas
BuildAndSucceed.com