James Ramsey the bible loving Prophet

For a long time Tannie and Kenneth Ackley had more bills than they could keep track of. There was a debt to Sears and another to Home Depot. There were medical bills, including a couple thousand dollars’ worth from Kenneth’s surgery to fix a heart defect a couple of years back. And there were the boat and the camper, which the Ackleys sold off to pay other bills they can barely remember, only to see new ones crop up in their place. All told, excluding student loans and their home mortgage, the Ackleys owed somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000—$50,000 “if you count the truck,” Tannie told me one balmy Sunday afternoon this April in East Texas.

I met the Ackleys while sitting beside them in a cavernous megachurch just off I-45 outside Houston. Tannie is a brown-haired clerical worker with an easy smile; Kenneth is a construction-equipment operator with a handlebar mustache. Along with about 5,600 other souls, we had flocked to the church to spend four hours getting financial religion from the man Kenneth and Tannie credit with setting them on the straight and narrow path out of debt. His name is Dave Ramsey, and he is the most important personal finance guru in America.

Walking on stage, Ramsey received a standing ovation before saying a word. A balding, energetic man with close-cropped hair around his temples, wire-framed glasses, and a neatly trimmed gray goatee, he wore jeans with a bright blue shirt and a dark gray blazer. If there were such a style, Ramsey’s could be described as “meticulous casual.” Even his accent, with its radio-friendly Nashville burr, conveys a perfectly calibrated mix of folksiness and authority. “I’m not here to get your money,” he said to an audience of people who had paid $39 a ticket. “I am here to change your life.”