Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as the financial industry underwent deregulation, and as consumer protections from credit card companies, banks, and short-term lenders were stripped away, the idea of personal financial responsibility as a coping mechanism took hold. Everyone was trying to fleece you, banks added fees for speaking to a teller or using your debit card outside of the country or asking for a paper statement or putting money in your account or taking money out of your account or closing your account. And the high priests of personal finance materialized in clouds of smoke, offering a prosperity gospel of discipline and attentiveness, if only you paid them on the installment plan.

The 1990s saw the rise of Suze Orman, Vicki Robin, and Dave Ramsey, gurus who built self-help empires of books, TV and radio shows, financial planning and counseling, all with the same message: document and account for everything. Any excess or frivolity was waste. Why throw away $3.50 on a cup of coffee when you could shove it in a Roth IRA and retire a millionaire forty years later? Meanwhile, interest rates were stagnant, so if you wanted your savings to grow you’d have to funnel it into investments, where a bunch of finance bros could do whatever they wanted with it. We all remember what happened after that.

But for all their financial expertise, most of these wizards still recommend buying property amid a manifest housing crisis. They advocate for “smart” investments while Wall Street bilks small-scale investors. And you don’t see any of them testifying in front of Congress against the lax regulation of short-term lending operations. But if you find yourself in a spiral of debt because you needed some cash when your car broke down a week before the end of the month, they’ll say it’s your fault for agreeing to the terms laid out in a payday loan. That those are the only terms under which the economically disadvantaged can find credit is not up for consideration. If you were not outright lied to, it is your responsibility, they’ll explain, to live up to your obligations. If you call into one of their many syndicated radio shows asking for advice, they’ll grill you on personal expenses, not on how your insurance company left you in a pile of medical debt despite your coverage. (And really, if you signed an agreement with an insurance company, you’re probably to blame for not researching your options thoroughly.) In a recent episode on his YouTube channel, Ramsey rebuked a caller for living outside his means by supporting his orphaned niece and elderly mother. He urged him to reconsider that support.