Financial Planning course at USCA

USCA students interested in learning to get – and stay – out debt can enroll in a 13-week financial course taught by Dave Ramsey, a financial author, television personality, and motivational speaker. The course is part of his Financial Peace University and will begin Jan. 25 at USCA from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. weekly.  The course is planning to be held in the Nursing building, with childcare provided.

Seats are available to those in need of financial assistance. Otherwise, the cost is $20 for students and $100 for those not qualifying for free seats. The URS Corporation will sponsor more than 60 seats with USCA donating the facility.

Additionally, selected participants will be followed by several local media outlets noting their progress throughout the 13 week course.

Dave Pethick, president of URS’s Energy and Environment Group states, “By sponsoring seats we are allowing individuals to attend an important class that might not have been able otherwise. Dave Ramsey teaches an amazing program and has helped hundreds of thousands of people reduce or eliminate debt. That’s very important in these financial times, and we are happy to be able to help in this way.”

The program became popular in evangelical churches before branching out into the mainstream. Now Ramsey currently has his own program on Fox Business Channel.

“The goal of the Financial Peace University is not just information – we’re looking for transformation. More than one million families have attended FPU with amazing results. On average, they pay off $5,300 in debt and save $2,700 in just 90 days,” according to Dave Ramsey’s website, www.daveramsey.com

Dave Ramsey’s program format is described by Megan Mcardle in the Atlantic Monthly as “more tent revival than accounting seminar, with the first 90 minutes or so mostly devoted to Ramsey’s personal story of ruin and redemption. During the second half of the 1980s, Ramsey built up a multimillion-dollar real-estate empire—then lost it all as the bank got nervous and called his loans, ultimately forcing him and his wife into bankruptcy. In searching for help in his hour of need, he turned to the Bible and discovered Proverbs 22:7: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave of the lender.”

Ramsey rails on his programs against borrowing and credit cards. He vowed he would never borrow another dollar again after his revelation; by all accounts he hasn’t, according to Mcardle.

In a 2007 New York Times article Stephen Brobeck, executive director of the nonprofit Consumer Federation of America, who reviewed the Financial Peace materials for The New York Times, said the advice was “fundamentally sound,” especially for people with low or middle incomes. “It’s better than you get from a lot of financial advisers, who make it complicated and possibly subject consumers to avoidable credit risks,” Mr. Brobeck said.

To register for Financial Peace University, or for more information, contact John Travis at 803-439-5002 or Andrea Graham at 803-649-3096.