Just about every Personal Finance Blogger out there has an opinion on Dave Ramsey.  Love him or hate him you have to acknowledge that he has changed the landscape of Personal Finance and Personal Finance education.  He has literally changed millions of lives for the better.

With the platitudes out of the way, I can now start the rant.  There is one point where I adamantly disagree with Dave.  He consistently tells people that a Debit Card issued by Visa or MasterCard is just as secure as any credit card issued by Visa or MasterCard.

He did this again on today's radio show.  A young lady, in high school I believe, called in asking how she could help her single mother to regain control of her finances and start on Dave's famous baby-steps.  It seems one of the main points of contention was that her mother was insistent that she needed to keep one credit card around in case of an emergency, which contrary to what Dave says, I believe is a good idea.  However, you must have the discipline to not use the card.   A $1000 emergency fund doesn't do much if you have to pay for a funeral or some other similarly large emergency expense.

To back up his stance he points to the Visa web site where they list their zero-liability policy. MasterCard also has a similar policy for their debit or check cards.  He is right when he states that both companies will refund any fraudulent charges.  However, the kicker is that Visa can wait up to 5 days and MasterCard up to 10 days.  If someone cleans out your checking account, making it 10 days while you fight with the bank to get you money back could be a little tough.

Unfortunately, I know how this works first hand.  I recently had some family members who had several large fraudulent charges made on their account with a debit card that had yet to be activated.  After taking the statement and the un-activated card (Still glued to the paper and in the envelope it came in) to the branch, the manager proceeded to accuse them of making the charges themselves.  After finally finding a manager at the bank that wasn't incompetent, they were still told they would have to wait for up to 10 days to get their money back.  In the end the bank did the right thing and placed the funds back in their account.  It took a total of 8 days.  Luckily for them they had backup funds.  They were able to pull from their emergency fund and wait it out.

Most of the people Dave Ramsey is advising are people struggling to get out of debt.  Many of them either don't yet have an emergency fund or only have the minimum $1,000.  Telling them that their debit cards are absolutely as safe as a credit card is the wrong thing to do.

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