Distant Reading Project

It is my responsibility to find an interest that’s related to my field of study to use for my distant reading project. I am an accounting major because I’m pretty good with numbers and I’ve always tracked down my earnings, which made accounting an easy choice. However, I’m not only a fan of numbers, I’m also a fan of podcasts, and I enjoy podcasts pertaining to any topic that I have any interest in, whether it’d be professional wrestling, MMA, or financial podcasts. I discovered financial podcasts relatively recently, and I’ve enjoyed them ever since. Specifically, the podcasters that I’ve enjoyed are Caleb Hammer and Dave Ramsey. And since I am an accounting major and Hammer and Ramsey are financial podcasters, I feel that it’s only appropriate that I use them for my project, especially considering that podcasting is arguably the most professional form of entertainment. When I did some research, I found three specific articles that piqued my interest. Those three articles were “Caleb Hammer says Dave Ramsey is ‘clueless’ when it comes to the ‘$1,000 emergency fund’ strategy,” “Here’s why financial expert Caleb Hammer refuses to pay down his student loans of $35K — while screaming at other young Americans for being deep in debt. Should you copy his tactic?” and “What Dave Ramsey and Caleb Hammer Taught Me About Handling Money.” What made me interested in these specific texts is that you get two articles that have an argument for which expert is better, one for each expert, and then you get an article that brings everything to a common middle ground and explains why both are helpful and useful. To quote a character from one of my favorite TV Shows, “There’s 3 sides of the story. There’s your two sides, and then there’s the truth.” And when you think about it, that’s what it seems like here, which is why I wanted to dive deeper into this topic. I wanted to talk about how both experts are helpful and how they are helpful in their different ways, different methods, and different pieces of advice. You might ask, “What makes them so interesting?” And to that I say some of their personal experiences that I knew about prior to this project are pretty interesting. Now, I know more about Hammer than Ramsey, because I watch Hammer more, however, I know that both of them have been deep in debt, both got themselves out of debt, and both have helped gotten many others out of debt as well. What I also know about them that I honestly enjoy hearing is they both have a “tough love” kind of approach to where they tell their guests things such as “Stop buying unnecessary things,” “You need to struggle a bit,” or “You can’t be traveling and eating out when you can’t afford it.” They both know that in order to be effective experts, they have to really get their advice through their guests’ heads so that they can pull them out of debt, and that’s why I respect and support them. One of the reasons why they’re so determined to pull people out of debt is because they themselves were in debt before that almost ruined their lives. Hammer was deep in student loan debt as a music student at Western Michigan University, and Ramsey had to file for bankruptcy almost 30 years ago for losing $4 Million in real estate. Even though it seemed like both of them were doomed, they managed to pull through by living paycheck to paycheck and saving every penny they made until they were financially stable. And just like the three articles, while they got into debt differently, they met a middle ground of budgeting and saving until they reached stability. As far as what I look forward to learning about them, I look forward to discovering what mistakes they made that they prevented their guests from making, how they manage their money now that they’re comfortable, and where and who they learned from the most. By diving deeper into their stories, I believe that I will learn more about their biggest strengths, their biggest weaknesses, and whether their critics or the fans are more validated.