A recent National Study of Millionaires by Ramsey is pretty eye opening, but it will be hard to grok by those folks who cannot distinguish between wages and earnings, or between income and wealth. Though it seems intuitively obvious to the casual observer, income is what you make, wealth is what you keep.
So as it turns out lots of American millionaires do not make beaucoup bucks. They're not bouncing off the socio-economic safety net, but they're not all in the C-Suite. They do sock away money in 401K's and IRA's and they generally follow the practices observed in The Millionaire Next Door. Perhaps this is why the top five careers yielding millionaires are pretty mundane.
Obviously there is one standout: teachers. Teachers make the top five suggesting there is something more we can learn from them than we previously thought. It is generally well accepted that teachers are not highly paid. There can be some debate, but the fact is teacher pay is probably not on par with the average engineer or mid-level manager. Teachers do get some increasingly rare benefits---in Georgia, the TRS is a defined benefit program and it is highly unlikely the other four career paths offer anything but defined contribution. Nonetheless, quite a few teachers become millionaires on a teacher's salary.
You should be inspired.
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