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Personal finance expert Dave Ramsey has finally weighed in on President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, dissecting the contents for his readers.
He took care to review the elements of the bill that affected homeowners, including the tax cuts and SALT deductions, while breaking down the highlights with co-host George Kamel.
His verdict? In his own words, he admitted that there’s “nothing” life-changing in the bill for homeowners—and advised his listeners to stop waiting for the White House to “fix your house”—because it’s not going to happen.
Dave Ramsey on the OBBBA: ‘No Big Beautiful Thing in Here’
As Ramsey made his way through the touted benefits of the OBBBA, he immediately reminded his listeners that, if you own a home, the only person who’s looking out for you financially is yourself.
“Quit waiting on the White House to fix your house,” he said.
By the time he made it through the finer points, he concluded that there was “no big beautiful thing” in the bill.
“It’s a bunch of nickel and dime stuff,” Ramsey said.
However, he did concede that the 2017 tax cuts being made permanent was a win.
“It makes the income tax filing fairly easy for most people,” he said. “It keeps you from having to pay federal income tax for a whole bunch of you at all just because you get this huge standard deduction.”
Most Americans—around 90%—take the standard deduction, and this move keeps taxes simpler and lower for them.
This tax cut includes raising the SALT deduction to $40,000, a change that will greatly affect homeowners in states such as New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York. The bill makes the current individual tax rates permanent and indexes them for inflation, a move backed by 86% of voters in the recent national survey taken by the National Association of Realtors®.
Hurry up if you want a rebate on solar
After covering no taxes on tips and overtime, which he thought was perhaps the most consequential piece of the legislation, he mentioned—but didn’t comment further—on the change to energy efficiency tax cuts for homeowners. Federal tax credits for rooftop solar, heat pumps, and other energy-efficient technologies are going away at the end of the year.
His biggest takeaway was to remind homeowners to make sure they installed and paid for solar and any of these other upgrades before the end of the year to get the tax cut still available in 2025.
He skated over the child tax credit increases to $2,200, but seemed generally impressed that more people can now use their Health Savings Account for things like gym memberships.
When Kamel brought up the subject of the Trump account for kids, Ramsey called the $1,000 credit “useless.”
“It’s just a thousand bucks,” Ramsey added, with Kamel pointing out that it remains unclear how the government will invest that money or how much control you as the parent will have over the funds, apart from setting up the account for your child to use toward either education or homeownership when they come of age.