Has anyone ever heard of these financial gurus?

Question

Has anyone heard of these finicial gurus: Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey, Clark howard, and Ric Adelman? and are they worth listening too?

Answer 1

I know Ramsey and Howard. I enjoy listening to them both, but they are a bit different in their advice.

Dave Ramsey is a good man. He's there to try and urge you to get out of debt, provide you with motivation, inspiration, and a REALLY good plan. I listened to him every day when he was on a local station. As that he is religious, some of his foundational advice will come from that background, but it's more than worth the possible discomfort you may feel. He's not a fire-and-brimstone holy roller, at least not on his show, and is well worth the listen.

Clark Howard is more of a general advice guy. If it relates to financial stuff, he'll talk about it, and give advice. Sometimes he will use his staff to basically bully institutions that are screwing consumers, so that's always fun to listen to. Unlike Ramsey, he believes that you should worry about your credit score and will advise people on credit matters, whereas Ramsey calls credit playing with snakes. Rarely, these two guys' advice will actually clash, but for the most part their similar.

Ramsey's got a plan, Howard has advice...

I do not know the other two.

Answer 2

I cant comment on Ric Adelman, since I have never heard of him.

I listen to Dave Ramsey quite a bit. He is all about getting out of debt, and has a very good program to get people to start saving and investing, and paying off their debts. As commented earlier, he is a religious person, but his religious views rarely come up on his advise in any practical manner. He can be quite harsh on people that are completely financially irresponsible though, which may be a good thing and work as a wake-up call.

I used to listen to Clark Howard a lot too, but he is more towards your daily finances in terms of funding car repairs, tax questions, etc. He is an encyclopedia, and can talk about anything related to a topic, so he can be a real education lesson way beyond finances. Definately another worthwhile guy to listen to, but it seems like Dave Ramsey gets more air time on the radios over here,

Suze Orman - She is more of a soft talk investment adviser, with some good ideas, but not as practical as the other two listed above. She is more about finding your own financial goals and objectives, and helping point you to the path that would best meet those goals and objectives. I think you will get much more from listening to Dave Ramsey and Clark Howard.

Answer 3

Dave Ramsey is pretty good. He's all about eliminating you personal debts and has a simple common sense way of going about it. That said, He's REALLY religious, so that can get annoying to people who aren't.

Suze Orman - from what I've seen is more about finding your comfort levels in investing and financial planning. Not the same focus as Ramesy but still good.

I don't know about the other two, so I can't comment on them.

Answer 4

Suze Orman was and still has licenses for investing. I have read her investing ideas but I disagree with her on FICO score. She is big about keeping your FICO score up. Which you have to do by maintaining debt.

I listen to, read, attended (FPU) and work Dave Ramsey's plan. His makes the most sense on how to get out of debt, how to stay out of debt and how to invest for the future, etc. I am now re-reading Suze's book to understand investments at a deeper level. I didn't understand her book until I read Dave's book. His book is easy to read, and his plan is very easy to grasp ("Duh" advice otherwise known as common sense) and he makes the basics of investing easy to understand. I highly recommend Dave Ramsey. As for his religious convictions, I agree with another poster, he isn't fire and brimstone. He uses one quote a lot "the borrower is slave to the lender." Even if you don't read the Bible, think about it, you are slave to the bank until you get that loan paid off!

Clark Howard, only read his website a couple months back. Didn't get a good sense or plan from him.

Don't know, never heard of Ric Adelman.

If you need a plan and serious about changing the way you work with money, Dave Ramsey is your man. If you want to stay in debt, follow Suze's advice. I suggest you read both of their number one books and make a decision and act!

UPDATE: To counter what J.B. says about Ramsey: "NO financial willpower at all" He is wrong. Ramsey is for people that want to be come financially disciplined and build wealth. His philosophy is you can't do that if you are paying money out in payments every month. He is right, think what you could do with your money if you didn't have to pay a car payment, house payment, credit card, HELOC, etc. Add up your consumer debt minimums and then think, what could you do with that money if you weren't slave to that bank payment? And Ramsey is popular. Why would he be popular? Because his plan works.

Answer 5

I've listened to them all pretty often. You can get good things from any of them. But they also have some real off-base advice along with the good. Dave seems to be the most popular but his is geared more toward people who have NO financial willpower at all.

Suzi is real hit or miss.

Clark is the most entertaining and is probably the most realistic.

One thing I like about Clark is he will have a staff-person giving counter-point to his frugal advice quite often. This lets you know that nothing he says is right for everybody.

Dave on the other hand will not allow people to point out other (often better) ways of doing things. He MUTES them and gives a one-sided debate about why they are "stupid" and that OK because he used to be stupid too. He's more of a dictator and I feel that loses him some credibility with people who aren't financially ignorant.

They are all good fun shows and you can get something good from each of them.

Answer 6

I have heard of Dave Ramsey. He is definitely worth listening to. He has a book called "The Total Money Makeover" it comes from his personal experience of how he became a millionaire in real-estate. However, He was fiscally irresponsible and lost all his money and job etc. Well he then became a millionaire again. This time not trhough real-estate but from learning from his lessons and being extremly fiscally responsible. My wife and I followed his plan and paid off $10,000 in a year. What we love most about him is he tells it like it is. He doesn't sugar coat anything.

I haven't heard of the others

Answer 7

We have used Dave Ramsey's plan for almost 3yrs. It has rocked our world. We have gotten almost totally out of debt, but it is not JUST about getting out of debt. If you actually stick w/it until you get passed the debt (step 2), you will find that the plan gets to be a lot more fun. When you actually start to see huge swings in your net worth & can walk up to buy a car w/ several thousand in cash, it is a blast! Of course, I enjoyed going all over the place to pay off my student loans in person, in cash. I even took pictures of the clerks & stuff for a scrapbook. People look at you like you are nuts. I may very well BE nuts, but I'm not broke. One final note: If you get on Dave's plan, people will make fun of you if you do it correctly. One of my welfare-receiving relatives called us "The Beverly Hillbillies" b/c we used to have 30 y/o cars. I just said, "Yeah, maybe we look like them, but they were millionaires." :)

Answer 8

I absolutely have that journey. no longer in effortless words Devi even Aiyappa entered my body many a circumstances in the course of the pooja time yet very last for about a minute yet to come back out of that journey it takes 15-0.5-hour some circumstances more suitable than an hour. trust me there is anAshramam at Tambaram Chennai. throughout Navratri pageant on Maha Navami day myself and Mr. Padmanabhan an recommend from Chennai observed Chamundeshwari Devi head to head. She became about 7 ft, tall shoulder length hair and donning yellow saree and pink blouseTwo of her the front tooth prowled out like small initiatives having the width of ha;f a palm.

Answer 9

Dave Ramsey is great, but he is about getting and staying out of debt. If you looking for investment advise, his is really basic so may not be for you.

Have heard of the others but don't know enough about them.

Answer 10

Clark Howard's approach suited me best because of his down to Earth, consumer driven, approach to all things financial. To get a good feel for his style you can download his programs from www.clarkhoward.com