Going to see Dave Ramsey last night was very cool. As I mentioned yesterday, he's the "Get out of Debt" guru. His show is part self-help, part entertainment and part motivational coaching. The whole evening is grounded in a seven step program. He also talked a great deal about how American Culture is saturated with a debt mentality. Ain't that the truth...
It also brings debt out in the open. If you see him live, you're sitting with a few thousand other folks in the same position. That's heartening.
What I came away from the show is this: You don't have to be poor to live within a budget. I don't know where I got the idea that only rich people could live within their means.
Jethro and I used the evening as a sort of pre-marital financial counseling session. Our ideas about money aren't far apart, so bringing him to the event was nothing. He's very open to new ideas and pretty much agreed with everything Dave said already. And he already practices a great deal of it, so there you go.
The show made me reflect on how writers often settle for being poor, especially theater folks. I also wondered about the wisdom of going to a *really expensive* university to study something that is saturated in poverty. An office manager for a theater company makes 20K-30K a year. Back in the 90s, I was responsible for working on a compensation study for nonprofits in California. I'm well aware of the salaries issues for nonprofits, and theaters usually fell on the low end of that spectrum. It's one of the reasons I never picked up a job in a nonprofit theater. I couldn't afford it, especially with the debt load from college.
Not only would my life be different if I was debt-free, but my writing would also be different. I'd have more time, for one thing. I could use the money I make to fund my writing project rather than my payments to debtors.
So, there it is. I enrolled in Financial Peace University, mostly to learn how to handle money. (Insurance? Wills? Whaaaa?) This will not be the last you hear about debt, the arts, and me. Time to grow up.
Bottom line: It wasn't one of those cheesy enpowerment exercises. Nor was it a rip-off. I highly recommend him to anyone. If you can't see him in person, at least listen to him on the radio.
