<prompt> Human: My husband is really into Dave Ramsey and takes his advice as gospel. Its helped us get out of debt but I worry our financial planning of our future has been made unnecessarily difficult under Dave Ramseys rules. We want to buy a house in the near future. We have already saved up over 50,000 and look to saving another 10-12k more before the end of the year. According to Dave Ramsey, we need to put at least 20 down for a house using a 15 year fixed rate loan, with our total mortgage only being 25 of our monthly take home take home being approx 5800 a monthThe average house in our area CA is around 250-300k so you can see we are almost at the 20 requirement.When I run the numbers through a mortgage calculator however under 15 year fixed, the monthly mortgage comes to almost 2000 via zillow. 2000 is more than 25 of our monthly take home. In order to get the mortgage payment to the 25 approx 1500 it looks like we need to put down over 100,000. Is that right? We also have two kids preschool aged. We havent even started saving for their college because Dave Ramsey says we shouldnt do that until we start saving for retirement. We havent started that back up again either because Dave Ramsey says we should save for a house first. We do have about 70,000 started for retirement started before we married. We also need to replace our car but all of our spare money is going toward this down payment. After going through the mortgage calculator, Im getting depressed. I dont think we can ever reach our goal, at least not before the kids go to college or we retire. Is Daves way really the way to go or should we just accept that getting a house is outside of our means and start saving for more definite future matters like our childrens college future and our retirement?  <response>: Almost everybody doesnt follow Dave Ramseys suggestions, and almost all of those folks do fine. With apologies to recovered alcoholics everyplace, he assumes everybody is one step away from disaster, so he counsels abstinence from debt as an AA counselor counsels complete temperance. Except mortgages, which are sort of ok. Sometimes. Even though they are actually debt. Saving 50,000 for a house but with nothing in retirement is sort of an odd allocation of funds. You dont need to buy a house, but youll probably need to retire. Youve now lost years that your retirement savings could be compounding tax-free.You also wont burn in hell forever if you take out a 30 year fixed loan. There is no magic behind a 15 year fixed loan. Youll just pay more interest over time. Likewise, credit cards are not really the devils handiwork. You get the idea. 