Dave Ramsey says 89% of millionaires didn’t inherit a cent. The formula isn’t a secret at all
If you’ve ever assumed that millionaires are mostly people born into the right family or handed a fat inheritance, a massive body of research says you’re almost certainly wrong.
Personal finance personality Dave Ramsey recently shared a striking finding from what he describes as “the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America (1).”
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Ramsey Solutions surveyed over 10,000 millionaires to understand exactly how they built their wealth, and the results challenge nearly every popular assumption about rich people (2).
“The typical millionaire that we found, 89% of them were first generation, meaning they did not inherit their money,” Ramsey said on the podcast This Past Weekend with Theo Von (3). “That’s good news for everybody. We’ve all got a shot.”
Nine out of ten millionaires, in other words, built their wealth from scratch.
The study also found that 79% of millionaires received no inheritance whatsoever from parents or other family members. Though one in five did get some inheritance, $1 million or more was given only to 3%. Most didn’t grow up with money, either: 80% came from families earning income at or below mid-level (4).
And it wasn’t high-powered careers driving the wealth, either.
Just 15% of the millionaires studied were ever in a senior leadership role, like CEO or CFO, and 31% earned an average $100,000 per year over their careers. In fact, teachers ranked among the top five occupations of millionaires in the study (5).
So what’s the formula?
According to Ramsey, the path these self-made millionaires followed came down to two straightforward moves: consistently investing in a 401(k) and buying a home, then paying it off (6).
He illustrated it with a real-world example: a 42-year-old with a home worth $600,000 to $700,000 — paid off — and $600,000 to $800,000 sitting in a 401(k). That person is already a millionaire, with no windfall required (7).
The study confirmed that eight out of 10 millionaires invested in their company’s 401(k) plan, and that step was identified as a key driver of their financial success (8).
What the data shows
The data backs this up more broadly. According to Fidelity (9), the number of 401(k) accounts with balances exceeding $1 million grew to 537,000 in 2024, a 27% jump from the prior year. Fidelity also found that participants who stayed in the same plan for 15 years had an average balance of more than $500,000.
