26 [BEST] Dave Ramsey Quotes (About Finances, Goals, And More...) (2024)

David Lawrence Ramsey III, popularly known as Dave Ramsey, is an American radio show host, businessman, and a well-known financial guru.

He is widely recognized as someone who helps people take control of their money to become debt free and financially stable. However, it wasn’t always easy for him. Even with a degree in Finance and Real Estate, Ramsey encountered financial difficulties in his life and eventually filed bankruptcy in 1988.

After losing everything, he began to study and learn everything about finances such as how to properly manage it and not let it control you. The obstacles he experienced led him to take control of his life and rebuild himself into the multimillion-dollar financial advisor that he is right now.

Ramsey has also published books including five New York Times bestsellers. In 1992, he wrote his first book titled “Financial Peace” who helped families teach their kids about the concepts of work, earning, saving, and smart-spending among many others.

Ramsey developed a set of lessons, exercises, and materials based partially on his own experience and partly on works and teachings by various well-known financial counselors.

Here are the top Dave Ramsey quotes and sayings that explores his views about life, finance, goal-setting, and more.

Dave Ramsey Quotes About Finances

1. “Most of the things we buy are wants. And we call them needs, but they’re wants.”

2. “You need some quick wins in order to stay pumped enough to get out of debt completely.”

3. “You’ve got to tell your money what to do or it will leave.”

4. “You have to teach children about money intentionally – create teachable moments.”

5. “I believe that through knowledge and discipline, financial peace is possible for all of us.”

6. “You can’t be in debt and win. It doesn’t work.”

7. “There are no shortcuts when it comes to getting out of debt.”

8. “The thing I have discovered about working with personal finance is that the good news is that it is not rocket science. Personal finance is about 80 percent behavior. It is only about 20 percent head knowledge.”

Dave Ramsey Quotes About Goals

1. “I’ve got a young man who works for me who says you don’t need to discover your dreams – you need to recover them.”

2. “I think that anyone who wants to start their own business can, but not any type of business.”

3. “Hitting bottom and hitting it hard was the worst thing that ever happened to me and the best thing that ever happened to me.”

4. “People are in such a hurry to launch their product or business that they seldom look at marketing from a bird’s eye view and they don’t create a systematic plan.”

5. “I think the lie we’ve told people in the marketplace is that a degree gets you a job. A degree doesn’t get you a job. What gets you a job is the ability to carry yourself into that room and shake a hand and look someone in the eye and have people skills. These are the things that cause people to become successful.”

Dave Ramsey, More Quotes & Sayings

1. “You’re not a bad parent if you don’t save for your kid’s college because instead, you had to choose to feed them and clothe them. Those things come first. They can go to school and do this thing called ‘work’ while they’re in school.”

2. “This is a great time for the ‘guerilla marketer.’ The days when you used to have to buy expensive TV time and a yellow page ad to get started are gone.”

3. “I like to write books where I get a question on the radio, and I don’t have an answer for it.”

4. “While I encourage people to save 100% down for a home, a mortgage is the one debt that I don’t frown upon.”

5. “You never cash out a 401(k) or IRA to pay off debt, unless it’s to avoid a foreclosure or bankruptcy.”

6. “I really am not a gold fan.”

7. “Credit is an ‘I love debt’ score.”

8. “My wife, Sharon, and I started with nothing when we got married. I was driving a 1902 Pinto and eating off a card table.”

9. “We are all in the business of sales. Teachers sell students on learning, parents sell their children on making good grades and behaving, and traditional salesmen sell their products.”

10. “Pay your utilities, gas and other basic needs before paying on your debts.”

11. “I have done stupid with a lot of zeros on the end of it. I know what it looks like.”

12. “Children who reach the age of eighteen with their entire skills set composed on Nintendo and eating Doritos have been neglected. Their parents neglected to give them the character traits necessary to live successfully.”

13. “My children were taught at an early age how money works and that it comes from hard work. They’ve been on a commission – not an allowance – since they were little. They learned that if they worked around the house, they got paid. If they didn’t work, they didn’t get paid.”

If you would like to know more about Dave Ramsey’s works and teachings, we would suggest you read one of his best-selling books titled “The Total Money Makeover Workbook: Classic Edition: The Essential Companion for Applying the Book’s Principles.”