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Dave Ramsey once again took aim at doctors and lawyers, saying their incomes don’t protect them from making poor financial decisions.
“Medical doctors are about as notorious as people in the music business or the acting world for being stupid with money,” the personal finance expert said in an episode of “The Ramsey Show.” “Only they add a level of arrogance to it because they’re so freaking smart.”
Ramsey explained that intelligence can sometimes backfire when it comes to managing money. “The hardest people to convince to use common sense are the smart people and lawyers and doctors,” he said. “The level of arrogance that comes with that often, it’s the hardest group of people I have to talk into it.”
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This isn’t the first time Ramsey has pointed out how wealth isn’t tied to income. In a separate episode, he broke down data from a Ramsey Solutions study of over 10,000 millionaires. “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 said. “Medical doctor didn’t even make the top five.”
Ramsey went on to emphasize that financial success comes from discipline, not a big paycheck. “One-third of the millionaires that we studied, 33% of them, never made over a hundred thousand dollars,” he said. “So it’s not your income. In other words, you can’t earn your way out of stupidity.” According to the same survey, 8 out of 10 millionaires came from families at or below the middle-income level. Only 2% said they grew up in an upper-income household.
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He added that the real key is structure. “They are systems people,” Ramsey said, referring to engineers, teachers, accountants and others who made the list. “Money works exactly the same way. You live on less than you make, you’re generous, you invest, you have a written plan.”
Ramsey, who has spoken openly about losing everything due to his own financial mistakes, wrapped it up with a reminder that no salary is high enough to cover bad habits. “You can’t make enough money to be stupid; it won’t work, you’ll lose it,” he said.