Will Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps Work in 2026? (our actual experiences)
Frugal Friends Podcast
Jen Smith & Jill Sirianni | Backyard Ventures
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 December 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is an old, classic piece of money advice that many people use to learn personal finance, but the world has changed a lot, and we can’t expect it to work the same way anymore. In this episode, Jen and Jill talk about the ways 'Baby Steps Framework' are still valid and the ways they believe they should be updated.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Will Dave Ramsey's baby steps work in 2026? Our actual experiences. |
| 0:09.8 | Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, |
| 0:15.0 | embrace simplicity, and live a rich in your life. Here are your host, Jen and Jill. |
| 0:23.4 | There's nothing that riles, a personal finance expert up, like talking about Dave Ramsey. |
| 0:29.0 | They either love him, work for him, he can do nothing wrong, or they hate him in his |
| 0:34.7 | entire existence is wrong. And I hate to break it to you, but both camps |
| 0:40.3 | are a little out of touch. Today we're going to be talking about whether the baby steps are out of |
| 0:46.3 | touch, because regardless of what you think about Dave Ramsey, the baby steps are one of the most |
| 0:52.0 | widely known, widely followed financial advice. |
| 0:57.0 | And we want you to know the ways that they are still useful in the ways that they need to change. |
| 1:03.5 | Nothing's the same. I know who to blame. Dave Ramsey ruined Christmas this year. |
| 1:10.2 | Welcome, frugal friends. I'm Jen. I'm Jill. And I hope Dave Ramsey didn't ruin your |
| 1:15.0 | Christmas this year. He might have. Maybe then. I hope it was wonderful. I hope it was |
| 1:19.5 | fantastic. Happy New Year. Happy. It's still December. |
| 1:26.1 | We don't know. It feels like Christmas is over, so it's the new year. Oh, yeah. So today, |
| 1:32.5 | regardless of your feelings on Dave Ramsey, we want to talk about his baby steps because |
| 1:38.0 | on for go friends, we critique information and ideas, not people. If you want to hear our criticisms about Dave Ramsey |
| 1:47.8 | and his company and his culture, not so much Dave Ramsey. Again, more the company and the culture. |
| 1:53.6 | We did do an interview on a podcast about it. The podcast is called Sounds Like a Cult, and we'll link to it in the description below. The Reddit post that I found on it. The podcast is called Sounds Like a Cult, and we'll link to it in the description below. The Reddit |
| 2:02.7 | post that I found on it actually agreed that it was a good episode. Yeah, it was a great episode. |
| 2:10.5 | I love doing that episode. And the thing about Dave Ramsey is he is very popular. It's where a lot of |
| 2:15.4 | people go for personal finance. It's how I first |
... |
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