Yup.
1) If you can follow Dave Ramsey’s advice, you will be smiling and secure for the rest of your life.
2) It’s 2024. Very few people today can follow Dave Ramsey’s advice.
Wages have not kept pace with inflation for the past 40-50 years. In fact, I believe that average US purchasing power really peaked in 1971. It’s all been downhill since then. And housing costs are the worst. In my area, starter homes start at around $500,000. There are tons of young people who can’t manage to get anything like a decent job — how are they going to buy a $500,000 house? I guess they should save until they’re 60 and then buy a house with a nice 15-year mortgage?
My wife and I bought a 30 year old Cape Cod as our first home, did a bit of sweat equity to increase its value, then sold it and used that as a down payment on a larger new construction home 6 years later to raise our two boys.
Maybe people these days expect to have what their parents had while they were growing up, but didn't realize what their parents had before they were born or were toddlers.
Oh, and the interest rate on that first Cape Cod was north of 12%.
The US Dollar was taken off the gold standard in the early 1970s, too. I'm sure it's just a co-incidence.