I don’t know if you are a Dave Ramsey fan or not, but I’ve been listening to him casually on the radio during my evening commute now for a few months and I had to write about something I noticed time and again on his shows. It seems like just about every person who gets on the air with Dave to ask for advice about a debt problem always answers with something in the 6-figure range when Dave asks what their salary is!
I swear that 85-90% of those callers say they make somewhere between $100,000-200,000 a year.
The first question I had for a while was, “How in the world can you have a problem with debt when you make 6 figures a year?!”
Then the answer gradually became clear to me – these people don’t have a problem with debt, they have a problem with spending! It’s a money management problem, made worse (magnified) by a large salary.
Think about it- we see it all the time with celebrities. They have multi-million (sometimes billion) dollar incomes and somehow lose it all. How does that happen?
The answer lies with the fact that money is a lubricant that greases your financial skids. But if you can’t steer the sled, you’re apt to fly off a cliff and the more money you have (lubricant) the faster (and farther) you’ll fly off that cliff.
The Dave Ramsey callers, like Ed McMahon, M.C. Hammer, Michael Jackson, and hundreds of other celebrities should serve as a reminder that more money alone will not solve your problems. In fact, it may make them worse! You should first get your financial house in order, then grow your income. Chances are, you’ll actually keep more of it that way. 
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