Dave Ramsey Surveyed 10,167 Rich Americans, These 5 Jobs Created The Most Millionaires
Dave Ramsey’s team surveyed 10,167 millionaires between November 2017 and January 2018, and the top five careers that produced them surprise most people. In order: engineer, accountant/CPA, teacher, management/business and sales, and attorney. Doctors came in sixth. Teachers outranked doctors.…
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Dave Ramsey’s team surveyed 10,167 millionaires between November 2017 and January 2018, producing what Ramsey calls the largest study of millionaires ever conducted. The top five careers among the wealthy are not the ones most people would predict. In ranked order: engineer, accountant/CPA, teacher, management/business and sales, and attorney. Doctors came in sixth.
Teachers outranked doctors. That result deserves a closer look.
How teachers on modest salaries out-saved physicians
The average public school teacher earned $74,495 in the 2024-25 school year, according to the National Education Association, a nominal gain of 3.5% from the prior year. Adjusted for inflation, teacher pay has fallen roughly 5% over the past decade, and teachers earn about 27% less than other professionals with similar education levels. For context, median weekly earnings of the nation’s 121.0 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,235 in the first quarter of 2026, which means a teacher’s paycheck still sits close to the national middle. Yet teachers made the millionaire list and physicians did not.
Ramsey attributes the outcome to behavior rather than income. Modest salaries encourage disciplined spending, and teachers typically have access to pensions and tax-advantaged retirement accounts that compound quietly across decades. A consistent savings process builds wealth. A modest income routed through a 401(k) for 30 years beats a high income consumed as fast as it arrives.
Physicians face a different problem. They arrive at high incomes late, often carrying six-figure student debt, and lifestyle inflation eats the raise almost immediately. Ramsey has said physicians “make a lot of money” but are “notoriously bad” at managing it. The career title is incidental. The financial habits underneath it are what determine the outcome.
The verdict: behavior drives the outcome, and the career is a proxy
The mechanic behind the list is savings rate combined with tax-advantaged investing and time. The study makes that explicit with a striking set of numbers. Only 31% of self-made millionaires averaged $100,000 per year over the course of their careers, and one-third never earned a six-figure salary in any single working year. And 79% received no inheritance from parents or family. A separate finding reinforces the same point: 89% of the millionaires surveyed were first-generation wealth-builders who started with nothing.
The behavioral signal is even sharper when it comes to specific habits. Eight out of 10 invested in their company’s 401(k) plan. Credentials mattered less than most people assume: 88% graduated from college, but 62% attended public state schools and only 8% went to a prestigious private institution. Only 15% ever held a senior leadership or C-suite role. And 93% credited hard work rather than high salaries as the source of their wealth.
Ramsey’s explanation for why these five careers dominate comes down to mindset. Engineers, accountants, teachers, managers, and attorneys all follow standardized workflows, and people who follow processes at work tend to build one with their money as well.
Three rules from the study you can apply now
Context matters here. Personal saving was $990.2 billion in August 2026, and the personal saving rate was 4.1%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. While that represents a recovery from the 2.7% trough recorded just two months earlier in June, Americans are still saving a fraction of what the millionaire cohort’s habits would demand. Three concrete rules from Ramsey’s playbook stand out:
- Cap rent at 25% of take-home pay. Housing is the single largest drain in most budgets. Average annual expenditures were $78,535 per consumer unit in 2024, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most of the room to raise a savings rate lives inside fixed costs, and rent is the biggest lever of all.
- Automate 15% of gross income into retirement before lifestyle creep hits. Push the contribution up first, then live on what remains. Automation is the most reliable way to reach the savings rate the millionaire cohort actually achieved.
- Capture the full employer 401(k) match, then fill a Roth IRA. The match is a guaranteed return on the contribution. The Roth adds tax-free compounding on top, and the sequence matters: free money always comes before your own after-tax dollars.
The caveat, and why it does not change the takeaway
The study is not peer-reviewed, and Ramsey Solutions had an obvious incentive to confirm its own framework. The respondents skewed toward people already sympathetic to debt-avoidance and budgeting principles, which may overstate how universal the pattern is outside that audience.
Even with those limits, 10,167 verified millionaires is a substantial data set. The habits behind the list, capturing the match, funding the Roth, keeping rent contained, automating 15%, and avoiding consumer debt, are available to anyone drawing an ordinary paycheck. The job title on the business card is a proxy. The behavior is the product.
Editor’s note: This pass updated the personal savings rate reference to August 2026 at 4.1% per the Bureau of Economic Analysis, reflects context that the June 2026 rate briefly dipped to 2.7% before recovering, and confirmed the NEA’s 2024-25 average teacher salary of $74,495 and the 27% pay gap versus similarly educated professionals.
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I've spent more than 15 years inside enterprise software, working alongside the finance, sales operations, and HR leaders who run the revenue engines at some of the largest tech companies in the country.
My day job is helping enterprise executives make smarter decisions about retention, compensation, and growth. These are the same operational levers that show up in every earnings report investors actually read. That perspective shapes my writing for 24/7 Wall St.
The headline numbers are easy. The interesting stuff is underneath: how companies make money, what executives are worried about, and what any of it means for the person checking their 401(k) on a Sunday afternoon. I write about personal finance and business as someone who has spent her career inside the rooms where these decisions get made.
