Why Did Dave Ramsey Fire Chris Hogan?

When I heard back in early March of 2021 that Dave Ramsey fired Chris Hogan, I was completely shocked. So, I immediately decided to jump into the details about what happened because I wanted to outline what I’d learned up to that point.

As I learned more about the circumstances, I decided to share 1) the facts as I knew them at that moment and 2) some particular thoughts I had about the situation as it relates my own personal experience with Ramsey Solutions.

My aim in creating this piece of content has been to help our community navigate to how to best absorb and metabolize this situation for many of us that have followed Chris over the years .

Once I started digging into some of the reporting around the circumstances, I felt compelled to make a reaction video really for the purposes of encouraging many of his and Dave Ramsey’s followers who may be feeling extremely sad, disappointed and just really confused by all of this..

Let’s get into it...

Hey friend, I’m Brad Long here with ZeroDebtCoach where we help 5 and 6 figure corporate employees and entrepreneurs: 1) organize and optimize their financial lives, 2) eliminate their debt and 3) accelerate toward financial independence by starting and growing online businesses.

So Chris Hogan is out at Ramsey Solutions. I saw the news and my jaw hit the floor. Stick around to the latter part of the video and I’ll outline my particular connection to him and to Dave Ramsey as some additional context for what I’m about share. 

What We Know

Chris Hogan is no longer with Dave Ramsey’s organization. Here’s the super vague “legally correct” 50 second video message directly from Chris announcing his departure.: https://youtu.be/WaIae-LsISo (this video is unfortunately now listed as "private").

I wanted to make this video because I think it’s important to have some solid, level-headed commentary around this situation to help us both frame and metabolize what has happened and give us some guidance on how we should respond.

I’ll leave links in the description below of the articles I’ve been consuming so that you can do your own research and come to your own conclusions. The story is still very early in its development, so keep that in mind if you’re consuming this content at a later date. Also, in this era of much “fake news” I always recommend you dig a little deeper and vett out your resources.

1. https://www.wsmv.com/news/lawsuit-alleges-dave-ramsey-s-company-fired-disciplined-employees-for-premarital-sex/article_a574dab8-8206-11eb-b60d-37d3053b5df2.html
2. https://religionnews.com/2021/03/10/chris-hogan-retirement-dave-ramsey-everyday-millionaire-righteous-living/
3. https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pith-in-the-wind/article/21146467/popular-ramsey-solutions-personality-out-after-personal-failings

The WSMV article outlines that Hogan’s departure was in part due to a federal lawsuit filed by another employee regarding her termination from Ramsey solutions for violating their company policy against “pre-marital sex”.

“Hogan’s announcement comes two days after attorneys for Cailtin O’Connor, a former Ramsey employee, filed requests for Hogan’s personnel file as part of an ongoing federal lawsuit.

O’Connor is suing Ramsey, saying after four years of employment, she was unfairly terminated after becoming pregnant out of wedlock.

As part of O’Connor’s filing, attorneys claim that eight Ramsey employees were disciplined for having premarital sex.

In a motion last month to try and dismiss part of O’Connor’s lawsuit, attorneys for Dave Ramsey responded by writing he is, “a purveyor of biblically-based educational resources, prohibits employees from engaging in premarital sex. Plaintiff’s employment was terminated for violating this rule.””

From the research I’ve done, it appears that it was likely that infidelity was likely a major contributing factor to Chris’s divorce back in 2019. 

The decisions we make on a daily basis can absolutely wreck our lives. I’ll leave a link to his ex-wife’s blogpost article in the description. 

https://melissajhogan.com/update-ramsey-solutions-statement/

I think the opening statement of her post is very well said:

It has recently come my attention, through a video posted on YouTube, that my ex-husband Chris Hogan is no longer a team member at Ramsey Solutions.

I note that while his statement generically expresses being sorry for harm, he does not take responsibility for the impact of his actions on his family, people who trusted him, or people whose jobs depended on his role and integrity. He does not acknowledge that his actions profoundly hurt people, including me, our children, my family, and other women he manipulated. He also does not acknowledge the role that Ramsey Solutions and Dave Ramsey himself played in harming and manipulating me, as well as covering up his actions. 

There’s a lot to unpack in all of this and I’m sure that the legal proceedings will likely unearth a lot of very potentially unsavory facts for us all to have to metabolize.

I want to add here that, having been through a divorce due to  infidelity myself, I can personally attest as to the complete and utter destructiveness of it all. 

Another complicated and disappointing assertion by Chris’s ex-wife here is that this problem was known for some time and Ramsey’s alleged handling of the situation doesn’t look good, according to her: 

As I noted in my initial statement of January 15, 2021, Ramsey Solutions was well aware of my ex-husband’s misconduct as far back as December 2018, or perhaps earlier. To the extent they claim that new information has compelled their decision to terminate my ex-husband, it is clear that they had sufficient information over two years ago that his conduct was inconsistent with Ramsey’s core values and chose to do nothing until now. Instead, they chose to manipulate, cover-up, and intimidate. 

And Chris’s ex-wife is not alone. Here are some additional resources that outline some of the alleged internal workings of Ramsey Solutions corporate culture.

https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2021/01/29/is-dave-ramseys-empire-best-place-work-america/4281535001/

It will be interesting to see how this all unfolds, but the overarching feeling for me right now is sadness and great disappointment.

This is both sad and a wake up call.

This is just sad and should be a warning to all of us about how easy it is to fall into sin. I know a lot of folks don’t like to use that word, but it’s a real thing that we all have to be aware and vigilant about keeping it and its resultant destructiveness as far from our lives as possible.

There’s no winner here apart from any potential justice for any of the alleged victims. Other than that.... Chris doesn’t win. Chris’s ex-wife and family don’t win, Ramsey Solutions doesn’t win, nor do the people who worked with and for Chris, nor do the fans and followers that were influenced by Chris’s work.

Again, the only possible win is for justice to be served for any and all of the alleged victims involved. It’s just a horrible situation all the way around and there are 3 things we can learn from this.

1. Make sure you have guardrails in your life. Sin, particularly sexual sin will tempt us at every turn and, as this situation shows, can completely destroy not only our lives but the lives of many around us.
2. If you’re a leader, you MUST have integrity in the way you enforce your company policies. There can be no partiality, favoritism,  “special treatment” or “protected classes”. You MUST be even handed in your dealings in all things. This holds true most especially if you hold yourself up as Christian leader. Now, admittedly all of this remains to be seen as a part of the legal proceedings, but the anecdotal evidence potentially points to some preferential treatment being meted out here to the benefit of Chris Hogan. Again, do your own research here.

1. Don’t trust men (or women for that matter). Humans are fallible and will always disappoint you if you hold them in too high a regard. Take the solid principles, apply them to your life but don’t get caught up in the all too common “cult of personality” so prevalent in our culture. That goes for Dave, Chris or anyone you might be following including me. We are all incredibly fallible and sinful human beings.

Share my experiences with the Ramsey Solutions organization.

I wanted to take a moment to share my personal experience with the Ramsey Solutions organization both as a graduate of their Financial Coach Master Training (FCMT) program as well as my year-and-a-half experience as a subscriber to their Preferred Coaching program, which I do extensively in the video above.

Where to go from here.

If you've been following Chris and are affected by all of this, you're not alone. My encouragement is to just keep following the principles he teaches and keep making progress. Keep doing what you were doing if in fact your were making progress toward: financial organization, debt-elimination, and toward investing.

Lest we deceive ourselves, we are ALL prone to fall into sin. Chris is no different than either you or I. Again, we ALL have to put guardrails around our lives to make sure we don't "stumble" into all the things that can destroy both our lives as well as the lives of those around us.

But, that does not excuse the consequences of sin. Indeed, sin should be dealt with and punished and justice be served. And for Christians we need to keep in mind that, judgement starts in the house of The Lord.

After admission of guilt and proper consequences, reconciliation should be sought after. This does not necessarily mean being best friends or even acquaintances but rather, a forgiveness as a state of the heart no matter what the externalities of proximity or relationship wind up being.

Call To Action 

We’re all about taking immediate action around here.

So, let me ask you, where are you in this story?

Are you just getting started with financial organization, budgeting and expense tracking?

Are you addressing and sacking your debt?

Are you in an investment posture and looking to start some sort of side hustle or online business so that you can escape the rat race?

Let me offer you some free resources to help you out...

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All that said, let's keep on building your financial acumen and make this your best year yet!

Thanks so much for reading and we’ll see you in the next video post!

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