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Dave Ramsey Says Doctors and Lawyers Are Just as Financially Clueless as Musicians and Actors

MarketDash Editorial Team
1 day ago
Personal finance guru Dave Ramsey says high-earning professionals like doctors and lawyers make terrible money decisions despite their intelligence. He points to research showing that engineers, teachers, and accountants are more likely to become millionaires than physicians.

Dave Ramsey isn't here to make friends with the country club set. The personal finance expert recently went after doctors and lawyers, arguing that fat paychecks don't prevent them from making spectacularly bad financial choices.

"Medical doctors are about as notorious as people in the music business or the acting world for being stupid with money," Ramsey said during an episode of "The Ramsey Show." "Only they add a level of arrogance to it because they're so freaking smart."

When Smart People Make Dumb Money Moves

Here's the uncomfortable truth Ramsey keeps hammering home: being brilliant in your field doesn't automatically translate to financial wisdom. In fact, intelligence might actually work against you when it comes to managing money.

"The hardest people to convince to use common sense are the smart people and lawyers and doctors," he explained. "The level of arrogance that comes with that often, it's the hardest group of people I have to talk into it."

Ramsey backs up his provocative claims with data from a Ramsey Solutions study tracking over 10,000 millionaires. The results might surprise anyone who assumes physicians automatically join the wealthy elite. "The top five career fields of the millionaires in the largest study … No. 1 was engineer, No. 2 is accountant, No. 3 was teacher, No. 4 was business professional … and No. 5 was lawyer," he revealed. "Medical doctor didn't even make the top five."

Teachers beating out doctors in wealth accumulation? That's not a story about salaries—it's about behavior.

The research gets even more interesting. According to Ramsey, financial success has almost nothing to do with earning power. "One-third of the millionaires that we studied, 33% of them, never made over a hundred thousand dollars," he noted. "So it's not your income. In other words, you can't earn your way out of stupidity."

The millionaire study also revealed that 8 out of 10 came from families at or below middle-income levels. Only 2% grew up in upper-income households. Wealth, it turns out, is built through discipline rather than inherited or high-salaried into existence.

So what separates the millionaires from the perpetually broke high earners? Ramsey points to systems and structure. "They are systems people," he said, referring to the engineers, teachers, and accountants who dominated his millionaire research. "Money works exactly the same way. You live on less than you make, you're generous, you invest, you have a written plan."

It's not exactly revolutionary advice, but that's sort of the point. Building wealth doesn't require genius-level insights or complicated strategies. It requires doing boring, sensible things consistently over time.

Ramsey knows something about financial disasters firsthand. He's spoken openly about losing everything due to his own money mistakes earlier in life. That experience informs his blunt assessment: "You can't make enough money to be stupid; it won't work, you'll lose it."

No matter how prestigious your degree or how impressive your salary, bad financial habits will eventually catch up with you. The doctors and lawyers Ramsey criticizes aren't failing because they're unintelligent—they're failing because intelligence alone doesn't create wealth. Discipline does.

Back to News

Dave Ramsey Says Doctors and Lawyers Are Just as Financially Clueless as Musicians and Actors

MarketDash Editorial Team
1 day ago
Personal finance guru Dave Ramsey says high-earning professionals like doctors and lawyers make terrible money decisions despite their intelligence. He points to research showing that engineers, teachers, and accountants are more likely to become millionaires than physicians.

Dave Ramsey isn't here to make friends with the country club set. The personal finance expert recently went after doctors and lawyers, arguing that fat paychecks don't prevent them from making spectacularly bad financial choices.

"Medical doctors are about as notorious as people in the music business or the acting world for being stupid with money," Ramsey said during an episode of "The Ramsey Show." "Only they add a level of arrogance to it because they're so freaking smart."

When Smart People Make Dumb Money Moves

Here's the uncomfortable truth Ramsey keeps hammering home: being brilliant in your field doesn't automatically translate to financial wisdom. In fact, intelligence might actually work against you when it comes to managing money.

"The hardest people to convince to use common sense are the smart people and lawyers and doctors," he explained. "The level of arrogance that comes with that often, it's the hardest group of people I have to talk into it."

Ramsey backs up his provocative claims with data from a Ramsey Solutions study tracking over 10,000 millionaires. The results might surprise anyone who assumes physicians automatically join the wealthy elite. "The top five career fields of the millionaires in the largest study … No. 1 was engineer, No. 2 is accountant, No. 3 was teacher, No. 4 was business professional … and No. 5 was lawyer," he revealed. "Medical doctor didn't even make the top five."

Teachers beating out doctors in wealth accumulation? That's not a story about salaries—it's about behavior.

The research gets even more interesting. According to Ramsey, financial success has almost nothing to do with earning power. "One-third of the millionaires that we studied, 33% of them, never made over a hundred thousand dollars," he noted. "So it's not your income. In other words, you can't earn your way out of stupidity."

The millionaire study also revealed that 8 out of 10 came from families at or below middle-income levels. Only 2% grew up in upper-income households. Wealth, it turns out, is built through discipline rather than inherited or high-salaried into existence.

So what separates the millionaires from the perpetually broke high earners? Ramsey points to systems and structure. "They are systems people," he said, referring to the engineers, teachers, and accountants who dominated his millionaire research. "Money works exactly the same way. You live on less than you make, you're generous, you invest, you have a written plan."

It's not exactly revolutionary advice, but that's sort of the point. Building wealth doesn't require genius-level insights or complicated strategies. It requires doing boring, sensible things consistently over time.

Ramsey knows something about financial disasters firsthand. He's spoken openly about losing everything due to his own money mistakes earlier in life. That experience informs his blunt assessment: "You can't make enough money to be stupid; it won't work, you'll lose it."

No matter how prestigious your degree or how impressive your salary, bad financial habits will eventually catch up with you. The doctors and lawyers Ramsey criticizes aren't failing because they're unintelligent—they're failing because intelligence alone doesn't create wealth. Discipline does.

    Dave Ramsey Says Doctors and Lawyers Are Just as Financially Clueless as Musicians and Actors - MarketDash News