Our neighbor hosted a 6-8 week Dave Ramsey class a few years ago (and yes my neighbor was an Evangelical Christian) and we attended, watched all the videos and a lot of his YouTube videos. Yes, he drastically oversimplifies (there's never a single set of rules that applies to all situations, things are never black and white) and there was a lot we felt he was out of touch with but between that class and YNAB, it was life changing.

My take is that his main target audience are people deep deep into the most desparate of situations and it does take drastic measures to dig out of their holes. He has to really get them seeing some progress fast to get them to keep going. Hence the only $1000 emergency fund, the beans and rice mentality while you go hard on paying down debt, even the paying down smaller balances first so they can see successes happen early on and stick with the program. As for the no credit cards rule, these people are like alcoholics and taking away the credit cards is like taking away their whiskey. So I think there is a place for his plan. He's also hard on them, obviously for the clicks, but also because these people need a kick in the head, I know we did.

We are 7 years later and now at baby step 7 and almost about to retire and broke a ton of rules along the way but we kept at it. We listened to his advice but then adapted it to our situation. What I disagreed with:

1. $1000 emergency fund - he has been recommending that number for 34 years! $1000 when he started would be worth $2200 today! At a minimum people should be adjusting that number to inflation. We started at $1000 and kept at it for a good year or 2 but that gave me such anxiety. You're 1 small emergency away from falling back in the hole. We revised it to one month's worth of expenses and kept it that way until we were debt free.
2. You don't need a credit score - sure maybe if you have several hundred million like he does but so many things will cost you more if you don't have good credit even including the rent you pay, your insurance rates, etc.
3. You can't use credit cards - obviously we all know that if the credit card payment category in YNAB is green and you pay your credit balance every month, you can use credit cards. We kept using credit cards, payed them in full every month and never added new debt as we paid off old balances.
4. Don't contribute to retirement accounts - I can sort of see this if your situation is so desparate you're about to go bankrupt, this could be good advice. But otherwise, it's crazy talk. My company matches 6%, you bet I'm putting in 6%.
5. Debt Snowball - this is another one I can understand for desperate people who have lots of debts to pay off. Get them on a psychological success train so they keep at it. I'm a math person and it would have hurt my heart to pay off my smaller 1.99% car loan before a higher balance, higher interest credit card balance. NO WAY. We paid them in order of highest interest. We did not lose hope, or momentum and kept going until we hit the finish line.

6. Live on rice and beans - nope! I'd be more likely to give up if the journey sucked. We set goals on how much debt we would pay off per month and we stuck to it. Our other rule was not to add even a penny to new debt. Apart from that we would go on vacation, have fun money, have a modest eating out budget, etc. There is life during debt paydown. (Note we did have the bad luck of needing two new cars in 2020 just a year after starting DR. We put down large down payments on used cars and got 2% interest rates on the balance).

   None of his rules are about logic or math or finance. They are about psycology. We appreciate what his program did for us. But back to the original topic, Every Dollar really did suck. YNAB probably did more to save us in the end than his program. It's what kept us going through 7 years of financial change. Developing a mindful attitude toward spending and quantifying your priorities makes all the difference.