Growing up, so many kids dream of being superstars, especially professional athletes. Although chances are very slim that you will make it into the NBA, MLB, or NFL, it does come true for a select few individuals. Along with being able to play your favorite sport on national television, you get paid millions of dollars to do what you love, there are many down sides to being a professional athletes that most regular citizens do not see. One of the biggest downfalls of being rich and famous is how to handle that sudden influx of a large amount of money. Far too many professional athletes find themselves broke, in bankruptcy and without a viable way to earn an income if they are not careful.
The same happens to all of us albeit on a much smaller scale. For professional athletes, many of them find unscrupulous financial planners taking advantage of them, their spending may be out of control, poor investments, abuse their finances, and/or find themselves in much deeper debt when they retired than they were in when they came into the world of professional athletics. So, why are so many professional athletes going broke? Are they so different from the average American? Ironically, there are a lot of parallels.
ESPN’s 30 For 30 Series – Broke
Last month, ESPN aired a documentary as part of their 30 for 30 series called “Broke”, which showed how many professional athletes went from rich to broke shortly after their professional careers ended. In many cases, the same reasons that they professional athletes going broke applied to our lives. They trusted poor financial planners, had ill advised investments, overspent, went into debt spending more than they made, did not have multiple income streams, lived above their means, and were responsible for too many friends and family members. Child support, bad investments, and living above their means were the downfall for many of these men.
More Money Compounds Poor Decisions
There is always the question of what people would buy if they hit the lottery. Some people have dreams of buying their dream car, owning a vacation home on a beach, or simply giving more to charity. We all have different dreams of what we would do if we hit the lottery, but most of us only simply dream. Professional athletes sort of hit a lottery after years of incredible work ethic and playing, a select few hit a big payday when they become professional athletes. Here are some of the quotes from the ESPN documentary that give us a unique insight into the financial world of professional athletics and paints a picture of what poor money management does when you have more money than you could have ever imagined. Many of these players receive the money so quickly going from broke to rich and back again in the blink of an eye. Former NFL player Keith McCants said during the ESPN documentary, “I bought myself a yacht, a mansion, a couple of cars. That ain’t a million dollars. That’s seven million dollars. I pretty much gave it away.” Another NFL player, Andre Rison, admitted, “I guarantee you, I spent a million dollars on jewelry.”