Dave Ramsey

Biography

David Lawrence Ramsey III (born September 3, 1960) is an American radio personality who offers financial advice. He hosts the nationally syndicated radio program The Ramsey Show. Ramsey has written several books, including The New York Times bestseller The Total Money Makeover, and hosted a television show on Fox Business from 2007 to 2010.

Ramsey experienced several years of financial recovery and began offering financial advice to couples at his local church. In 1988, he founded the Lampo Group, a financial counseling service, and in 1992 he wrote and self-published his first book, Financial Peace. 

Ramsey began as one of three alternating hosts of The Money Game on radio station WWTN/Nashville in 1992. The show eventually became The Dave Ramsey Show, Ramsey's daily three-hour call-in financial advice talk show.

Financial Peace University, Ramsey's nine-lesson, video-based personal finance course, debuted in 1994. The Gannett newspaper group ran his financial column, though dropped it when the newspaper realized that Ramsey had changed the names on the letters to which he was responding. He offered to pay them their money back. The Dave Ramsey Show aired on the Fox Business Network from 2007 to 2010.

In 2014, The Lampo Group, Inc. was rebranded as Ramsey Solutions. The company's headquarters are located in Franklin, Tennessee, and a new 47-acre campus opened there in 2019. 

Ramsey has written five books for adults, three of which were New York Times bestsellers, and six children's books.  He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2015. 

In 2014, The Daily Beast reported that Ramsey had lashed out against former employees he claimed were discussing working conditions at the company on Facebook and Twitter. At company staff meetings, Ramsey recounted conversations from a private Facebook group of former employees that he had infiltrated, offered cash rewards for the identities of some members who took to anonymous Twitter accounts once they realized Ramsey had joined the private group, and "pulled a gun out of a bag to try to teach a lesson about gossip"[10]. The incident prompted an increased backlash, a meeting Ramsey set up to confront critics, and the eventual deletion of several of the critical Twitter accounts.