Dave Ramsey's Unexpected Advice on Reselling Taylor Swift Tickets Has Fans Reeling

Dave Ramsey is known for giving realistic, often frugal, advice about how to get ahead financially to listeners of his popular radio show “The Ramsey Show.”

That’s why it was quite shocking when he agreed with advice given by his co-hosts not to resell Taylor Swift concert tickets that could have paid off nearly half of a recent college grad’s student loans.

The advice to keep the tickets, which were reportedly worth several thousand dollars each, was initially given by Rachel Cruze and Ken Coleman — and the reason Ramsey gave for siding with the co-hosts is probably not what you think.

Earlier this year, when pop sensation Swift was in the midst of her record-breaking Eras Tour, a mother called to ask Cruze and Coleman if they thought she should encourage her 22-year-old daughter to sell her Swift tickets and put the money towards her student loan balance.

The mother had gifted her daughter around $600 to purchase three tickets during a pre-sale. The tickets were in huge demand, and on the resale market, the mother estimated that three tickets could net around $3,000 to $4,000 each.

The mother told Cruze and Coleman that her daughter had about $24,000 in student debt — and reselling the tickets could essentially cut that in half if they went for $4,000 each.

Since the concert tickets were initially a gift from the mom, who invested just over $600, to her two daughters, both Coleman and Cruze agreed that they should not sell them.

Coleman added some additional clarification: since the mom never had plans to pay $9,000-plus of her daughter’s student loans before she lucked out and got the tickets, and the concert was a once-in-a-lifetime show, it made sense just to keep the tickets.

When the clip of Cruze and Coleman’s advice to not sell the tickets came out, many fans flooded the show’s YouTube page with comments about how Ramsey would not agree.

Surprisingly, he did — but for a reason unrelated to the possible payoff. Ramsey explained that the Swift tickets were a gift to the caller’s daughter, and even with all the potential earnings at stake, the mother should not take the gift back.

However, the financial guru said that he would have given her very different advice if it were the daughter who called. “I would tell the daughter to sell the tickets, but I’m not going to tell the mom to renege on a gift,” Ramsey explained.

After the initial chat with Cruze and Coleman, the mother said that she and her daughter decided they would go to the concert as a family.

After crunching the numbers with the co-hosts and the value of investing in experience, it became clear that for her Swifty daughter, it was well worth it to forgo the potential payday.

Ramsey is known for his stance on getting rid of debt as quickly as possible. Paying off all debt except the house using a “debt snowball” is one of his famed “Baby Steps” to achieve financial freedom.

However, Ramsey explained that in the Swift situation, it was the mother who initially invested, not the daughter — and the student debt was not the mother’s cross to bear.

While Ramsey said he would encourage the daughter to sell the tickets in favor of paying off her loans if she was the one asking the question, Cruze and Coleman were very much in agreement that there is a balancing act between financial responsibility and life experiences.

“You weren’t planning to cut a check for $9,500 to put on your daughter’s student loan,” Coleman told the mother. “...this is your daughter’s, and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime concert.”

While the team over at “The Ramsey Show” often focuses on how to be more financially responsible, the co-hosts agreed that there are certain situations where emotions or desire outweigh the potential economic benefits.

Coleman added that the daughter’s student loans are her responsibility. “She’s 22, she needs to pay the thing off herself anyway,” he explained. “...This is about the emotional, not the financial.”

In defending his position to not sell the tickets, Coleman explained the joy he felt seeing his teen daughter recount her own experience attending Swift’s Eras Tour.

He reiterated that some bucket list items are worth the cost of the experience, even if you stand to make much more if you skip out on them.

Even though it shocked some fans that Ramsey would side with the notion that wildly in-demand concert tickets should not be resold for a huge profit, the moral of the story is that some experiences are worth more than a potential payday.

Even if skipping out on an event might help lower your financial stress, sometimes the non-financial pros just outweigh the cons.