Dave Ramsey Says Income Is Your No. 1 Wealth-Building Tool — How To Use It Before You Lose It
Written by
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
Edited by
Nicholas Morine
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Financial guru Dave Ramsey recently shared his No. 1 wealth-building tool: your income.
“You work too hard to get to the end of your life and have nothing to show for it! Today is the day. Today is the day you can decide to change your life,” he wrote in a Sept. 29 post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Your income is your most important wealth-building tool. And when your money is tied up in monthly debt payments, you’re working hard to make everyone else rich.”
In a video accompanying the post, Ramsey elaborated on how this can be achieved. First, as he noted, all of the millionaires he has interviewed — unless they inherited their money — built their wealth by saving their money and investing their income.
“They did not give their income to Sallie Mae. They did not give their income to Best Buy. They don’t get screwed around and give their income to Lexus and Toyota and Ford and General Motors and American Distress and MasterCard,” he said in the video.
According to him, it boils down to one simple concept. “It’s a mathematical thing,” he said. “When you give your income to someone else, you don’t have it anymore.”
In turn, he argued that credit cards, student loans, car payments, or borrowing money on your house to put granite countertops in, is all “stupid.”
In other words, stay out of debt.
The Only Good Debt?
As Ramsey Solutions explained in a blog post, the only “good debt” is paid-off debt.
“Your most powerful wealth-building tool is your income. And when you spend your whole life sending loan payments to banks and credit card companies, you end up with less money to save and invest for your future. It’s time to break the cycle!” the post read, in part. “Trying to save and invest while you’re still in debt is like running a marathon with your feet chained together.”
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