Dave Ramsey Gets Called Out By A Pastor For Giving 'Hypocritical' Advice On Mortgages — He Admits Fair Point But Hard To Get People To Save Up 10 Years

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Calling into "The Ramsey Show" can feel like stepping into the financial version of a boxing ring — most callers get advice, some get a verbal smackdown, and occasionally, someone lands a punch right back. That's what happened when a small-town pastor challenged Ramsey on what he saw as a contradiction in his teachings.
"I often hear you use the phrase, 'the borrower is slave to the lender,'" the pastor said. "But then on the other end, I noticed that when it comes to a mortgage, you are okay borrowing in that instance, which seems almost to betray that principle a little bit."
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Dave Ramsey didn't flinch.
"It is the only hypocritical advice we give on this show," he said. "It's the only time that my advice is inconsistent with my life... and it's completely, completely fair for you to call me out on it."
Ramsey explained that after going broke in his 20s, he made a personal commitment never to borrow money again — and he's stuck to it. "I don't borrow money for anything. Ever. For any reason. Under any circumstances," he said. But when advising others, he said he makes "that violation" because of two main reasons.
First, he said it's easy to steer people away from car loans because "cars go down in value," interest rates are higher, and "there's no correlation between buying cars with payments and becoming wealthy."
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Second, Ramsey said data from his team's research on millionaires shows "they borrowed to buy a house many times, and when they got it paid off, they never borrowed money again after that." While he still believes "the best way to do it is save up and pay cash for it," he admitted, "It's hard to get people to save up for 10 years to buy a house."
His mortgage advice remains strict: "No more than a 15-year mortgage, no more than a payment of a fourth of your take-home pay... and then get the stupid house paid off as fast as you can. The shortest distance between where you are and wealth is debt freedom."
For people who still like the idea of owning property but don't want to spend a decade saving or deal with the headaches of being a landlord, there's another route: fractional real estate investing. Instead of scraping for a full down payment, platforms now let you buy small stakes in income-producing properties — meaning you can still put your money into real estate without taking on a massive loan or replacing a busted water heater at 2 a.m.The pastor also suggested adding a Baby Step to create a cash buffer, but Ramsey said that's really just part of budgeting. "You can put a $100 buffer in there if you want, but that's fine... you don't need a $2,000 buffer because you're incompetent at budgeting," he said. "Don't plan to spend money you don't have in your account and your need for a buffer goes away."
Ramsey stood his ground but acknowledged the sting of the question. He's a realist — telling people to buy a house only with cash may be the purest version of his principles, but it's not advice most Americans can actually follow.
Sure, Ramsey himself can pay cash — he's admitted to owning more than $600 million in real estate — but he doesn't expect the average homebuyer to live like him. For most people, even saving for a down payment is a stretch, and a mortgage becomes the only practical path into homeownership. His "hypocritical" exception isn't so much bending the rules as it is meeting people where they are.
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This article Dave Ramsey Gets Called Out By A Pastor For Giving 'Hypocritical' Advice On Mortgages — He Admits Fair Point But Hard To Get People To Save Up 10 Years originally appeared on Benzinga.com