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.…
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
Dave Ramsey’s team surveyed 10,167 millionaires between November 2017 and January 2018, and the top five careers that produced them are not what most people would predict. The ranked list: engineer, accountant/CPA, teacher, management/business and sales, and attorney. Doctors came in sixth.
Teachers outranked doctors. That result is worth sitting with.
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 on average than other professionals with similar education levels. For context, median usual weekly earnings for full-time workers came in at $1,235 in the first quarter of 2026, so 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. Modest salaries force disciplined spending, and teachers typically have access to pensions and tax-advantaged retirement accounts that compound quietly across decades. A savings process is what builds wealth. A modest income routed through a 401(k) for 30 years beats a high income spent as fast as it arrives.
Doctors arrive at high incomes late, often carrying six-figure student debt, and lifestyle inflation consumes the raise. 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 matter.
The verdict: behavior drives the outcome, and the career is a proxy
The mechanic behind the list is savings rate plus tax-advantaged investing plus time, and the study makes that explicit. Only 31% of the millionaires averaged $100,000 a year over their careers, meaning nearly 7 in 10 never consistently earned six figures. One-third never earned six figures in any single working year. And 79% received no inheritance whatsoever from parents or family. A separate finding underscores the same point: 89% of the millionaires surveyed were first-generation wealth-builders who started with nothing.
The behavioral signal is even sharper on 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. People who follow processes at work tend to build one with their money, too.
Three rules from the study you can apply now
Context matters here. The personal savings rate fell to just 2.7% in June 2026, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Americans are saving less of what they earn, the exact opposite of what the millionaire data rewards. 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. With average annual household expenditures at $78,535 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.
- 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 should always come 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 the June 2026 figure of 2.7% per the Bureau of Economic Analysis, added NEA data showing teacher pay is down 5% in real terms over the past decade and trails similarly educated peers by 27%, and included the study’s finding that 89% of the surveyed millionaires were first-generation wealth-builders.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
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.
