Large study of over 10,000 participants showed the top 5 careers for millionaires

[LevelUP]

Top findings

• The top five careers for millionaires include engineer, accountant, teacher, management and attorney
  
  
• Only 31% averaged $100,000 a year over the course of their career
  
  
• 88% graduated college
  
  
• 52% of the millionaires earned a master’s or doctoral degree
  

Interestingly, teachers were the millionaires. I wonder why that is?
Doctors earn a lot but are bad at saving money and likely have large college debt.

The National Study of Millionaires
https://www.ramseysolutions.com/retireme...s-research

[sanantone]

There are several reasons why these professions are more represented among millionaires.

Student loan debt - medical school is expensive

Numbers - there are 3X more teachers than physicians

Income - engineers have high incomes, but they only need a bachelor's degree

Financial literacy - accountant is self-explanatory

Retirement benefits - many people become millionaires via their retirement plans. Government agencies tend to offer better retirement benefits than most private sector employers.

One article on this study theorized that it's about personality. In most of these professions, everything is black or white, right or wrong. This makes them anal about tracking their finances.

[wow]

It's sort of interesting, but naturally I'm having some contrarian thoughts:

*Being a millionaire isn't what it used to be. It's worth maybe half as much as it was back when books like The Millionaire Next Door were coming out. Anyone with the capacity to invest in their retirement (that is, they have a source of income that covers more than basic needs) should aim to be a millionaire at minimum by the time they retire.

*The study talks about the most common professions among millionaires, which makes sense for David Ramsey's purposes. He wants to normalize having a lot of savings. But it's not actually that helpful for figuring out which career path is most likely to get you to millionaire status. For that, one would want to know the percentage of millionaires per occupation, and the information would somehow need to be divided up or standardized based on age, because someone who is 65 is much more likely to be a millionaire than someone who's 25 in the same career with the same pay and the same retirement benefits.

[NotJoeBiden]

This is a heavily flawed study. It doesn’t even list the methodology, so we have no idea how it was conducted.

Dave Ramsey makes money peddling his financial advice and has a strong vested interest in promoting the same conclusions his institute reached with this survey.

You should always question reports like this.

[LevelUP]

This is a heavily flawed study. It doesn’t even list the methodology, so we have no idea how it was conducted.

Dave Ramsey makes money peddling his financial advice and has a strong vested interest in promoting the same conclusions his institute reached with this survey.

You should always question reports like this.

True, but Dave Ramsey is known for bringing people on his show who have high college debt, which one could argue doesn't promote attending college.

The study shows that a college degree strongly correlates with higher income, ultimately making it easier to become a millionaire.

[sanantone]

This is a heavily flawed study. It doesn’t even list the methodology, so we have no idea how it was conducted.

Dave Ramsey makes money peddling his financial advice and has a strong vested interest in promoting the same conclusions his institute reached with this survey.

You should always question reports like this.

True, but other studies have found that an overwhelming majority of billionaires have college degrees and that most millionaires become millionaires by saving and investing. In the federal government, there's a term called "TSP millionaire." TSP is a 401k-like retirement account.

[bluebooger]

> Interestingly, teachers were the millionaires. I wonder why that is?

depends on what a "teacher" is

went to law school, became an attorney, practiced for 20 years, now a professor at a law school

is that person a teacher ?
yeah
is that how they made their millions ?
probably not

[sanantone]

An article from yesterday on there being more 401k millionaires.

https://www.fox13news.com/news/401k-mill...es-us-more