Dave Ramsey: Teachers Are ‘Outearning Stupidity’ To Become Millionaires on $61K
Written by
Martin Dasko
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Nicholas Morine
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Most people will assume that you have to make millions of dollars with your career or come from a wealthy family to become a millionaire. However, popular personal finance expert Dave Ramsey recently shared that teachers are becoming millionaires despite having low salaries.
According to a study conducted by Ramsey Solutions of over 10,000 millionaires, the top five careers for millionaires were engineer, accountant, teacher, management, and attorney. The study also discovered that 79% of the millionaires polled didn’t receive an inheritance — and that 93% built wealth by working hard.
Why do teachers with a median salary of $61,000 become millionaires so often?
Passion Gets You There
“Don’t pick your career based on how much money you can make only,” said Ramsey. While choosing a field based only on the pay is tempting, you want to find a career that brings you joy so you’re not dreading your work.
Ramsey believes you don’t need a lucrative salary to build wealth, as long as you figure out how to manage your money. It’s possible that teachers have found a job they enjoy, which has led them to find ways to create their desired lifestyle around it. They channel their passion to manage their finances better.
Slow and Steady Works Better When Building Wealth
“They are systems people,” commented Ramsey when discussing the results on air. “They work with a set of principles, and they don’t have free rein to make up their own rules.”
The study found that only 15% of the millionaires surveyed worked in senior management roles, so most respondents had to save and build wealth over time. This means teachers found ways to save money from every paycheck despite never earning a particularly massive salary.
When it comes to slow and steady growth, doing so means focusing on the basics of personal finance — like setting aside money from every paycheck and finding ways to cut unnecessary items out of the budget. Proper financial planning may also see teachers investing their funds in high-yield savings accounts or ETFs instead of looking for an elaborate investment opportunity.
Millionaires Are Educated Enough
According to the study, it’s the degree that matters and not where the degree comes from. According to the study, 62% of millionaires graduated from public state schools, with only 8% attending a private school. However, with 88% of the millionaires holding a degree, it goes to show that those who studied to become teachers valued their education without overspending on that piece of paper.
The teachers who became millionaires likely earned an education without spending a fortune on it. As such, they were more likely to be able to afford early investing and may have smaller student loan payments than counterparts.
There’s No Built Up Demand For Spending
While someone who spends years in school to become a physician or a high-level management executive will miss out on years of earning potential, teachers can enter the workforce faster in most cases. Since they’re earning from an earlier age — and finding ways to make their smaller salaries work for them — they don’t have the same built-up demand to spend frivolously.
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