I take a few minor exceptions to what he teaches, yet tell people who come through my financial small group that if they don't like what I promote and instead go with Ramsey's teachings, they'll be fine. Of course, in the group I don't mention solar or the EV since that won't work for most people. Plus, the solar and EV are more of a full-fledged self-reliance on energy concept (thus more fitting for a conservative political forum on how to be independent of government control).
One of the things I do differently is talk a little about investing while talking about budgeting. I tell people over and over not to invest until they've paid off most or all of their debts (with exception to the mortgage), so in that sense I'm almost like Ramsey's baby step 2. But I bring up investing every now and then during the budgeting and debt talk phase as a teaser to encourage people to make a budget and hurry up and get out of debt. (Do you want to start investing sooner and start those compound returns sooner? So let's get busy on that budget and paying down debts.) IMHO, Ramsey makes baby steps 1, 2, and 3 boring for many weeks, where I sprinkle in a little investing talk to keep the discussion alive and keep them motivated.
Another thing I do differently is I often promote starting Roth IRA's when high percentage debts are paid off, but not necessarily all debts are paid off. I do that to get the clock rolling on the Roth IRA's 5-year start rule. Later people seem to be more motivated to invest in their Roth IRA if they know they can take money out without penalty (5-year rule is satisfied, Order of Distribution rules for Roth IRA's allows for contributions to be withdrawn penalty free if the Roth IRA was started at least five years ago, even if you're not 59.5 years old yet).
Another thing I promote differently from Ramsey is a healthy fear of inflation, which leads to promoting a broadly diversified portfolio spread out across many mutual funds and many asset classes. And if you're retired or near retirement, still keep 70% in equity funds. Usually at that point Ramsey doesn't get into detail and he says to "sign up with one of my investor pro's in your area". But the few times he does talk in some detail, he promotes 50% equity/50% bonds for retirement. The problem with the 50/50 design is that it barely keeps up with normal inflation (assuming withdrawing 4% annually to live on). It certainly doesn't keep up with the kind of inflation we've had for the past 15 years (especially not the past 2 years). So for the past 6 or 7 years I've pushed a 75%/25% portfolio spread out over 40+ mutual funds (30+ in equity funds and 10+ in bonds/treasuries/money market funds). In a market downturn your overall balance will be low (say in Oct 2007 you have a million, then in March 2009 it was about $700,000), but some of your funds will be up and good for the annual 4% withdrawal (or 1% quarterly, or 1/3rd of 1% monthly). I made software to download decades worth of daily NAV prices of various mutual funds into a SQL Server database on my personal laptop, then made other software to generate reports and graphs over different timeframes (i.e. what if you retired in January 2000 right before the dot com crash?) to show how even a 75/25 portfolio would always have something that's up to withdraw from (sell high), while also on the bull market years build up the wealth to keep up with inflation (except perhaps crazy Bidenflation).
Another thing I do differently from Ramsey is baby step 5: kids' college. What I don't like about a College 529 account is it limits you to college (or vocational training) if you want to make penalty free withdrawals. What if your kids don't go to college? Or what if you put in enough for a bachelor's degree and your kid instead goes into plumbing (and probably makes better money than most bachelor degree holders)? So I promote using Roth IRA's and Roth 401K's for both retirement and college. Most people won't max out contributions in both their Roth IRA's and Roth 401K's anyway. So put both your kids' college investments and your retirement investments into your Roth IRA's, and if that's more than the maximum contributions allow put the excess into your Roth 401K's (of course after already putting into your Roth 401K whatever you need to get the full company match). That way, if you don't need as much for college as you thought you did, you have more for retirement growing tax free. Maybe even take an early retirement: since you can withdraw the contributions portion penalty free regardless of age, if you're wealthy enough you can retire at say, age 53, live for a couple of years on Roth IRA withdrawals that are just contribution portions, transfer your old Roth 401K to your Roth IRA and all of that money counts as "contributions" you can withdraw penalty free, then at age 55 work again for a few months at a place with a 401K and transfer your old 401K to your new work's 401K, then retire and withdraw penalty free from your 401K/Roth 401K under the Age 55 rule. At age 59.5 all of your 401K/Roth 401K/Roth IRA money is available penalty free for withdrawals (unless you did conversions from traditional 401K or traditional IRA money, which starts a new 5-year clock with each year you converted, but that's a side topic).
For the folks who insist on having their mortgage paid off at the earliest possible time, if the interest rate is a fixed low rate (obviously not a new mortgage), I encourage investing extra instead of paying down extra on the principal. The investment account will grow faster than the mortgage would be paid down. And when the investment account balance equals the mortgage balance (plus some extra for capital gains tax unless it's in a Roth account), use the investment money to pay off the mortgage. For the folks who are okay with a mortgage debt in retirement (like me), that's fine as long as your retirement investments are enough to live on plus the mortgage balance. In other words, if I was to withdraw from my investments today enough to pay off the balance, what's left of my investments need to be enough to live on for the annual 4% withdrawal. So if anyone is going to be like me instead of you and have a mortgage debt, that's fine, they just can't count themselves as wealthy enough to retire unless the investment balance is also enough to pay off the mortgage at any point they have the need to be debt free (i.e. if I one day get tired of the bank's rules of my house and want to separate myself from the bank by paying off the mortgage that day). But until one reaches that kind of bad relationship with the mortgage/bank, by not paying off the mortgage early it leaves you more money invested to fight a very real monster: inflation.
The best message I took from Dave Ramsey was:
“If you live like no one else today, you will live like no one else tomorrow”.
My wife bought a house below our means. Didn’t take any vacations for 20 years. Paid cash for cars after saving up for years. Made our kids work to pay for their wants. We paid for their needs.
There are several things I have learned independent of DR or anyone else that has a published opinion. One thing is there is no such thing as good debt and bad debt, rather what we have is degrees of bad. Another, even DR will allow a home mortgage as long as you put 20% down of a 15 year fixed, the cost is no more than 25% of household income and you strive to pay it off as quickly as possible. This is an important part of living below not above our means.
I have spent much of my adult life thinking that being debt free was impossible, but it is possible because I’m debt free. Like you I don’t care what anyone else does with their money, their mistakes are not my worry. Having said that I personally think it is a huge mistake to retire with any debt, mortgage, HELOC because things can go sideways on a moment’s notice and without advance warning. Secured debt means you co-own your stuff with a bank and that bank can take possession of your stuff if you are $1 in default. That $1 gives the bank controlling interest.