"One size fits all when its the truth"

Listening to a recent Dave Ramsey podcast, he said "One size fits all when its the truth." I think that is a great statement. As I stated in a recent blog post, I believe that a lot of Dave Ramsey's advice is general. Make no mistake what I mean about this is that a couple of the things he teaches are his opinions and some are based on truth. For example, the truth is borrower is slave to the lender and debt is bad. Therefore, he urges people to get out of debt, avoid debt no matter whether its considered "secured" or not. Ask anyone who has a lot of debt and most of the time they will be frustrated that they so much of their hard work goes to paying debt. If your mortgage is 25% of your income, do you like that every day 25% of your time working is to pay someone else? Probably not. "But I get property out of that." If you have a 30 year mortgage, you haven't even paid off half of the mortgage until 20 years into paying that debt!

When its the truth, like North is North, the temperature, or how much money you have in your bank account...the truth is not relative. However, some of Dave's advice is opinion and not truth. "You must put 15% of your gross in retirement savings." I am not sure what truth that is based on. You must save for retirement, no doubt. If you don't know what you will need, 15% will be a great start. But, I am not sure the 15% should be taken as truth. I will tell you one thing though, if you are just out of college and do 15%, you will live a great life in retirement and thats the truth...