I wholeheartedly agree on the payment amount limitation. It's certainly unrealistic for me.

I think I misunderstood you, and I'm sorry for that. As far as I know, that is/has been "Dave's rule." I thought you meant he had changed to a position in recent years that you felt was (if followed) inhibiting people from buying a home whereas he might have held a different view previously.

I think I'm with ya now.

we'll just have to agree to disagree on the snowball thing, I've helped several non financially inclined folks clean up their mess and his method has produced more reliable results in each case (but the tough part always comes with the behavior afterwards, it's hard to watch some of them slowly slide back down again).

it really is amazing how alien a concept not buying things you can't afford is to so many people. heck, it was a foreign language to me not all that long ago which really adds to that "voice in the wilderness" feeling.