Same Game, Different Stakes: What Pro Athletes Teach Us About Everyday Financial Planning

In this episode, Nikita is joined by former professional athlete turned CFP®, Jeff Locke, to explore a surprising truth: when it comes to money, pro athletes and everyday earners are playing the same game—just with different stakes.

From locker rooms to living rooms, the financial challenges are more alike than you might think. Jeff shares firsthand stories from his time in professional sports, revealing how even high earners struggle with overspending, credit, family expectations, and the pressure to “keep up.” Along the way, he and Nikita break down the core financial principles that apply to everyone—no matter your income.

They dive into the fundamentals that never change: building an emergency fund, following a smart investing order, and avoiding lifestyle creep. They also unpack the unique realities athletes face—like short career windows, sudden wealth, and high-risk investment pitches—and what those extremes can teach the rest of us.

At the heart of the conversation is one key idea: financial success isn’t about how much you make—it’s about behavior, discipline, and systems that support your goals.

Whether you’re managing a steady paycheck or navigating more variable income, this episode offers practical, actionable lessons to help you build a more secure financial future—without getting caught up in comparison or complexity.

Resources:

• Jeff Locke's LinkedIn
• Start here: Build your financial foundation 
• Protect yourself first: Emergency fund basics 

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Hey 3rd Decade community, I'm your host, Nikki DeWolf, and today I'm joined by a special guest, Jeff. Jeff is a certified financial planner, former kicker for the minnesota vikings, and 3rd Decade Board Chair. I'm excited to have this with us today to unique perspective, 46 seconds of athletes, and how financial advice remains relatively simple, whether you're making $30,000 a year or three million.

Speaker 1 0:42

Happy to be here. We've put it off for a long time and finally recorded it, so I'm excited.

Speaker 0:47

Yes, long overdue conversation. So I would love it if you just took some time to share a little bit more about yourself and just how your professional journey has developed over the years.

Speaker 1 0:57

Yeah, so I mean I started out like most of our third decade participants with very little financial knowledge, just to be frank. Like didn't know what I was doing in any way, shape, or form with my finances. Started out at UCLA, so played football my whole life. Actually, played soccer my whole life, is what I should say. Uh not American football, European football my whole life. Uh then transition transitioned to American football in high school, got lucky, right, had good people around me, was lucky to get a scholarship to UCLA. Um so then I went to UCLA, played football there for four years, um, while also getting an econ degree, and then again, luck, hard work, whatever it is. Um, I got drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in 2013 as a punter. So go to the NFL. Um, I always say it's probably the coolest first job you can have coming out of college. Um, but for most of us, it is just your first job. And played five years in the NFL. Super, super fortunate to have that opportunity. Um, again, had good mentors around me and pretty much said, hey, this isn't gonna be your job forever. So I was doing internships at investment companies, internships in venture capital while also in the NFL, um, which made my transition out of the NFL after wounded up being about six and a half years um a little easier.

Speaker 2:24

So yeah. Yeah, so I was gonna ask, like, when did you start noticing that like passion for personal finance? Was that like maybe kind of sparked by your econ degree?

Speaker 1 2:35

Yeah, actually it wasn't econ. Anyone that knows econ in school, it's not personal finance, it's freaking numbers and all the stuff that actually doesn't apply to real life. Um, I actually did an internship in college with the National College Players Association. And part of my job was helping my teammates and other college athletes budget their scholarship checks or budget what they were getting from their parents to supplement, you know, what they had to do in college. So that's really where my like personal finance and helping others started in my life, right? Because I've always been good with numbers and you know figuring out cash flows and stuff like that. So helping others do it in college was like the start of it. And then when I was in the NFL, I got the opportunity to also teach the rookies on all the teams that I was on how to you know really start their financial journeys. Now that I look at the third decade program, it's 80% of the same stuff. I was teaching the rookies as the stuff that we do in the third decade.

Speaker 3:33

Yeah, no, I believe it. And and that's gonna be basically the whole discussion today is how it doesn't matter your income level. There, the vast majority of this stuff applies regardless of how much you make.

Speaker 1 3:45

Yep.

Speaker 3:46

I would love to hear maybe a story from your time advising pro athletes. Maybe something that surprised you because obviously you weren't always, you know, applying this stuff with teammates who had huge paychecks, but then suddenly you were. So, what were some stories that surprised you?

Speaker 1 4:01

One of the most surprising things was actually just the lack of financial help that players were getting from the teams they were on and the NFL itself. I thought there would be programs on programs and people all over the place helping guys with their finances, and you essentially get like one or two seminars a year.

Speaker 4:22

Is that still the case today?

Speaker 1 4:25

They've tried to start doing a better job, but what I learned is actually the leagues and the teams don't want to be liable for advice they give guys, because then they're gonna get sued for the advice they give. So they essentially try to give the bare minimum, maybe direct guys in the right place, the right direction, but they're not really getting much. Um especially because you see so many headlines, right? Which is actually a small percentage of guys in the NFL and pro sports that actually do go broke and get in financial distress, but you see these headlines that everyone clicks on. People love seeing the downfall of someone that makes a lot of money, unfortunately. Um you would think there'd be more impetus to go out and try to fix it, especially at the league and the team level, but there's just not a lot there, which is pretty pretty eye-opening for me.

Speaker 5:22

Yeah. Has there been any part of you that has like considered developing something to try to bring that in, or is there really such a barrier for the NFL to like even allow anyone to come in and attempt it because of that fear of liability?

Speaker 1 5:37

It's a great question, and literally it's what I thought I was gonna do when I was done playing in the NFL. I thought I was gonna come in and be a financial educator, right? And really go into colleges, go into pro teams, and deliver all this education that I thought was needed. What turned me away from it is actually similar to the third decade in how we approach financial education is that you just give financial education as a blanket, you know, just in general, it doesn't always stick. Right?

Speaker 6:08

Yeah.

Speaker 1 6:08

The best way for financial education and literacy to actually work is called just in time education, right? When someone is going through the things you're teaching them, is the time you need to actually deliver it, right? Which is why why really I became an advisor for pro athletes because now I have full access to our clients all the time. So as they're going through these pain points and these learning opportunities as they develop, I can then apply the education directly. And that's what sticks and impacts for a long time. And third decade is similar, right? We work with a very specific type of person in the third decade, and we apply the curriculum when they're about to go through all these things.

Speaker 6:51

Yeah. Well, that's great that like I love that you still get to do a version of it. Like in a very important and maybe arguably, arguably, like you said, more effective version of it because people will apply it if they're going through it. If they're thinking about something future term, it's not quite as effective if they can't apply what they're learning right then and there. So what is an example of whenever you realize that athletes and the everyday person kind of struggle with the exact same things financially?

Speaker 1 7:20

Yeah, I got a personal one for this. So I got drafted in 2013, um, got a signing bonus, like finally have money in my accounts post-college, right? And I go to get an apartment in Minnesota when I get there. I'm filling out my application for my apartment, and I get denied for my application for the apartment. And they say, You don't have enough credit history. We cannot approve you for this apartment. I've got an NFL contract signed, a four-year contract, and money in the bank, and I have to go get my parents to co-sign on an apartment for me my first year in the NFL. That is credit, right, is something I didn't know about. Yeah, but it's something everyone goes through. You could literally be a first-round pick in the NFL and be have $10 million plus dollar signing bonus, and you can go through the same thing because credit and having a lot in your account are two different things. Credit's about behavior with a loan or behavior and trust to make payments on time, and they don't care how much you got in the bank if you haven't proved that you can make those payments over time. So we see that in the third decade all the time, and I see it in my day job all the time, no matter how much somebody's making.

Speaker 8:33

That's a really interesting thought. Yeah. I I have a friend who has some family wealth and stuff that has been able to make it so that they don't need to go to the bank for loans for certain things. And so they have no credit history too. And I'm like, but you don't understand. If you buy a house, you're unless your parents can also frontload that, like at some point in your life, you're gonna need credit health. Um, as much as it's maybe strange to the logical thinker where you're like, if I have the cash, who cares? But that is not the way the system is designed, my friend.

Speaker 1 9:05

That's what I always say to our our clients is like you're behaving with the small loans so that you can get better pricing on the big loan later, right? So like it's five, it's a five or ten year plan for when the actual house buy is happening, or the really big, big loan later. And it's it's hard.

Speaker 9:23

Yeah. Did you see a lot of uh social pressure for spending maybe like at capacity or even at some points above capacity, even for these people with huge paychecks, like still feeling financial strain because they're overextending themselves?

Speaker 1 9:38

Yeah, I think the non-athlete and the athlete, you get the same social pressure now from social media, right? Like we're all looking at the same stuff, right? Maybe your feed's a little different because of the circles that you run in. So there's always that. And then the locker room can be a place of great education of you know, other teammates helping you along, but it can also be a place of you know keeping up with the Joneses times 10, right? Because you've got guys that might be literally one or two years older than you, but making 10 to 20 times as much as you. So you see the lifestyle they're living, and you try to stretch for it too early, right? Or you try to live that same life because it just looks looks awesome. Like this is a veteran guy on the team, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

Speaker 10:24

Yeah.

Speaker 1 10:24

So that is something that we work with our clients constantly, especially when you're a young player in the NFL in your first couple years, is really waiting until that big second contract to let the lifestyle kind of inflate. It's also typically when you might start having kids, might get married, so costs are gonna go up anyways, but it's really fighting those first couple years in the NFL to not overextend. And that's a constant conversation we have, especially with our young players that we work with.

Speaker 10:51

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you see a propensity for athletes to have the desire to help family and friends more? Like they see these checks and they're like, great, I want to like make sure all of my immediate family is comfortable.

Speaker 1 11:04

Yeah, it's a conversation we always have. Like, not always. Some clients come from families that, you know, they come from wealth or upper middle class, and there's not a need to give back. But a lot of the players in the NFL, to be frank, come from almost nothing. Right? They're the first person in their entire family to maybe get their college degree and then get a job that pays the way it pays. This getting to the NFL literally is the ticket out of some people's city where everyone else stays and they never want to go back. So there is pressure to take care of people, and rightfully so. A lot of people do take care of a lot of family. Right. The the thing that we always work on is how you take care of someone matters. Right? Just writing someone a blanket check every year might not be the best way. Maybe you're hiring them to help you with your marketing or in your business on the side. You know, maybe it's, you know, as long as X, Y, and Z happen, this comes. You know, so it's like it's really difficult. And sometimes we end up being the no person to extended family, you know, who's also looking to get help. Uh every client situation is so different though, that it's hard to like give like this is what you should do and shouldn't do with family.

Speaker 12:31

Yeah, that must be really like hard to navigate as a pro athlete. I just I imagine that if I was in those shoes, which we can all rest assured, I won't ever be, so it's okay. Uh, but if I was a pro athlete and had a check like that, I'd like obviously start with like my immediate family, but then it's like, oh, now grandma's heard that like Nikki can write a check for this much to so-and-so. So it's like it starts like kind of rippling out, and you're like suddenly having extended relatives asking you for money too, and and depending on the family, obviously. And that just sounds like a really hard thing to navigate. I have a lot of empathy for those athletes.

Speaker 1 13:08

Yeah, it's tough because I mean no one wants to be the person that just like shuts everyone out once they've made it, right? And it's like, no, this is my money, I worked for it. You know, they want to help, but exactly what you said. It's it's how you frame it and how you navigate the conversation around the help you're giving that has to be finely crafted and managed, or else what you said can can't happen, and then you're just you're essentially not we we use an analogy with a lot of our clients is you have to put on your oxygen mask first, like in the plane, before you put on it for somebody else, right? And that's with giving to family and helping family. It's like we got to make sure your financial future and your immediate family, your wife, your kids, right, are taken care of before you know helping others.

Speaker 14:00

Yeah, yeah. And that, you know, you're not gonna have this huge paycheck your whole life, and you might have to allocate a larger portion of it to future retirement security than what you might feel like doing if you want to not have to save for the rest of your life towards retirement, too. So let's go ahead and pivot to some of the universal things that impact both all, I should say, areas of income. So emergency funds. Obviously, everyone needs one. What does this look like for an athlete? Because I know like a typical individual needs three to six months of their essential expenses to have a healthy emergency fund. Sometimes people even recommend a little bit more than that, depending on job security and various other factors. But what does that look like for an athlete?

Speaker 1 14:44

Yeah, an emergency fund for an athlete is just bigger. Three to six months ain't gonna cut it. And the reason why is first, I mean, just like many people, your career can end in a second.

Speaker 14:56

Yeah.

Speaker 1 14:56

Right? So what most people don't know about NFL contracts is a majority of NFL contracts are not guaranteed in any way, shape, or form. So you get drafted, you get your signing bonus, and then for the first four years of your deal, unless you were a first-round pick, maybe a second round pick, you're playing, you're getting paid for every game you play. The second you get cut, the paychecks stop.

Speaker 15:17

That is so stressful. That sounds terrible.

Speaker 1 15:20

Yeah. That's how I live for my my four years in the NFL. I got my signing bonus, and then every game, it was, you know, you get paid for the game.

Speaker 15:27

Does it just feel like you're holding your breath?

Speaker 1 15:30

I mean, you just learn to live with it. Like everyone, everyone around you is in the same situation, except for guys on guaranteed contracts later on. So you learn to live with it. Wow. Um but you could literally be done with football tomorrow, right? Especially if you get an injury, right, and then you're out of the NFL, can't get back in. So what happens if you only have a three to six months emergency fund, right? That's not enough of a runway for you to pivot to a new career and a new industry where you gotta start over, essentially. So we usually actually recommend you having two to three years worth of an emergency fund when you're a professional athlete, because that's truly what it takes to, I mean, pivot industries, figure out what what you want to do next, go through the emotional roller coaster of being done as a professional athlete, which is very difficult, and that you pick yourself back up and really start as you know, a junior associate somewhere in a new industry working your way back up. That's wild. It's not only getting the not only getting the job, but also supplementing your income the first couple years when you're not getting paid a lot in your new job. So it's the same principle, the same importance. It's just a different sizing because of how the career change happens.

Speaker 16:49

Is there anything like a special type of disability policy for professional athletes?

Speaker 1 16:54

There are. There are disability policies that you can get. Um, a lot of them will exclude pre-existing conditions. So they don't necessarily help guys that had injuries in college that then flare up again in the pros. And these policies are extremely expensive.

Speaker 17:10

Yeah, I was gonna say because it's like I don't do you know, is there like a stat that is well known of like what percent of athletes have career-ending injuries?

Speaker 1 17:17

Yeah, it's actually a good stat that I should know that I don't, but almost all athletes' careers end because of injury or performance. And some most of the times performance and injury are tied together. You're not performing well because of a nagging injury.

Speaker 17:30

Yeah.

Speaker 1 17:30

So disability policy is something we look into for almost all of our clients. It's not always the right choice because I mean these premiums can be $50,000 to $100,000 a year, you know, for a $600 to a million $600k to a million dollar payout. You know, they don't always make sense to do it.

Speaker 17:49

Yeah. Wow, interesting. Learn something new every day. I wasn't sure when I asked the disability question. Um, I know about a lot of other disability policies, but not that one.

Speaker 1 17:58

Yeah, especially in especially in football. The disability policies are more expensive than baseball, even the MBA, um just because of the risk.

unknown 18:06

Yeah.

Speaker 18:06

As far as the investing order, do you see any difference in how you recommend professional athletes invest their money compared to the everyday person? So our philosophy at third decade is attain your company match, contribute to a Roth, go 401k, uh, or you know, whatever your employer account is, again, up to the maximum amount or what you're able to contribute, and then move to like a taxable brokerage. Do you see similar or different investing order for professional athletes?

Speaker 1 18:34

I love to say this. It is literally the same exact investing order.

Speaker 18:37

Love to hear it.

Speaker 1 18:38

Company match. The cool thing, like the NFL's got a crazy company match. It's two to one up to about $20,000 of your contribution. So you put in the $24,500 minimum or your your max as an employee for 2026. Yeah. Um, as long as you're past your two in the league, they're gonna put in, I think, $39,000 of their own money, the team in the NFL.

Speaker 19:06

So Okay, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 19:08

Yeah, so you always at least put in their part. But I mean, yeah, for people in the NFL, you're in the highest tax bracket. So you're pretty much always putting in your full employee deferral of 24-5 to get what you need to get in the deduction, and then you get the match. And then Roth's a no-brainer, right? Where our clients are in higher income brackets, so it's almost always a backdoor Roth IRA rather than a direct Roth IRA.

Speaker 19:36

But could you describe how a backdoor Roth IRA works?

Speaker 1 19:41

Yeah, so I don't know why the IRS has it, but there's a little legal loophole in their thousand-page book of rules that essentially says you can put money into a traditional IRA, same amount you could put in a Roth IRA, as long as you don't deduct that amount on your taxes, so it's called a non-deductible contribution. You can then just essentially immediately, I'm gonna I I'm not I put up air quotes, I'm not on film right now, but depending on who you talk to, it shouldn't be immediate, but you essentially convert that to your Roth IRA, and that's how you get money into your Roth IRA, just like a direct Roth IRA contribution every year.

Speaker 20:21

And does it uh reduce the amount in the Roth as if the money has been taxed?

Speaker 1 20:26

No.

Speaker 20:27

This sounds like a very shady loophole. I know it's not shady because I know a backdoor Roth is a thing, but how is this a thing?

Speaker 1 20:35

We don't know why it's a thing, to be honest. It's like it's something that many lawmakers have thought about closing for years and it never gets closed. But essentially anyone can put money on a Roth IRA. You just have to do it a different way. And there's there are different rules on getting access to your money. So when you do a direct Roth, you can pretty much get your contribution out almost immediately if you need to. But when you do the backdoor, there are different rules on getting it out fast. You typically have to wait a couple years to be able to get it out, but effectively it's the same thing.

Speaker 21:09

Fascinating. I have known that I needed to beef up my knowledge on backdoor Roth IRAs for a long time, and it's never made sense to me. So I I think I just didn't bother trying to learn it. Uh, but that's crazy.

Speaker 1 21:21

Yeah, and then the only other wrinkle in the investing order is a lot of NFL players, if they make money off the field, endorsement income, um, you can also contribute to an individual 401k because that is separate from your earned income in the NFL. That is you as a business. So there's different strategies there. And if you make a whole lot of money off the field and you're making a lot of money in the NFL, you might do what's called a mega backdoor um Roth 401k, where you can get like $70,000 into Roth 401k each year. Oh my goodness. Okay. Those are the advanced, advanced strategies that um we sometimes do.

Speaker 21:58

Very interesting. You kind of outlining that and helping it make sense. Okay, moving on to another area where we see a lot of overlap. Lifestyle inflation, keeping up with the Joneses. So I would assume that athletes face quite a bit of pressure from teammates with the cars they drive, the homes they buy, the jewelry they wear, all of that. Do you see this in other ways as well? Do you I guess we talked already a little bit about kind of even just the locker room, like seeing the guy who's making, who's further into his career making a ton more than you and comparing yourself to him. How do you see lifestyle inflation and keeping up with the Joneses appear?

Speaker 1 22:37

Yeah, you kind of nailed it. It's it's gonna appear in almost all the same ways it appears for everybody else. It's looking at your neighbor, looking at your friend who's making more than you, seeing what they have. Um, I mean, consumerism is the staple of American culture. Let's just be honest. So, like, we're seeing it everywhere we go. The next thing you need to be the person you think you should be now or in the future. It's everywhere.

Speaker 23:02

And I imagine social media is even more insidious with its impact on pro-athletes because they have so much more exposure. They probably have like brand deals being thrown their way all the time, um, and and just a lot of social media noise and glamour probably in that space.

Speaker 1 23:22

Yeah, these uh these social media companies love to create little silos, right? So you're following other players, you're following certain brands, it's gonna keep showing you the same types of people and brands who are they following, they're following other really nice things, so it just it's a perpetuating cycle. And then, yeah, you sprinkle in then you're around a lot of wealth all the time. You know, not only your teammates, but the owners of these teams that are billionaires, you're seeing how they operate and how they do things. You're also getting pitched a lot of things, right? We know, especially like exotic car dealers, jewelry dealers, you know, people selling brand new homes being developed, they're going out of their way to find your contact information and get to you to pitch you these things because they know that you have the assets theoretically to do all these things. So very similar, but I also I hate to say the term, but you get hunted as a pro athlete by people that want your money for these things you don't really need.

Speaker 24:28

Do you see that there's like a almost like FOMO for these people considering these like private investments and these deals being pitched their way? Is there like a like what if I don't do this and it's a huge mistake? Because I'm sure that those are some high stakes things. And it might feel really enticing, but they're also like some of the riskiest things, and they might just be really left high and dry with some of these investments.

Speaker 1 24:52

Yeah, on the investing side, you I wish I could share some of the investments we've seen our clients get pitched that are just like out of left field, no suitability, not even no suitability, no fiduciary duty, like no nothing when it comes to what they're being pitched to invest their money in. And we can barely even get like a business plan out of the person pitching it to the client, you know? So it's like you see a yeah, you see a lot of things, but the phone, but the FOMO's there, right? Because again, a young guy on his first contract sees teammate on second or third contract that is opening businesses, you know, is setting up these extra things, and they have the capital to do that. They've already put their oxygen mask on, right? And now they have the ability to use some of their free time, free income to go and do these things. But you feel like you have to do it. You know, I gotta, I gotta be like the veteran in the locker room, and it's hard not to.

Speaker 25:52

Yeah. I had a question kind of pop into my mind again, maybe a little off topic, but do you find that pro athletes tend to, or at least some of them have like almost like a survivor's guilt? Like if they did come from nothing, for instance, and now suddenly they're doing really well, and they are like I mean, we have our money psychologies pretty well formed by what is it, like age nine or something. What does that look like on a person who might still feel like, oh, I'm never gonna have enough, or like I'm never gonna have that security, but now they have like the best chance of security they'll ever have. What does that look like?

Speaker 1 26:30

Yeah, it's such a good question. It's so difficult. Every client's a little bit different. We we make a point whenever we work with a new client to like really talk about money psychology and what what money meant to them growing up. You know, what were their examples? What did money mean? And to simplify, we see kind of two different very drastic routes. If you if you really came from nothing, right, you either you kind of you can keep the mentality of like, I'm gonna not spend any of my money. I'm gonna save it all up because I never know when I'm gonna have money again. Or the mentality might be every time I've had money growing up, I try to figure out what I'm gonna buy next. Right. I've never had money in my account. I don't I don't know why you'd keep money in your account, like go and get the next thing that you need, right? Those are the two those are the two drastic ends of the spectrum, and then there's everything in between those two drastic ends, but it's something we have to work on with our clients all the time, is like just how they relate to their money and their wealth. And and you and I know, and a lot of people are in in our industry know that like it's really hard for someone that doesn't come from our world and has been exposed to compound growth charts and all these things to realize what investing can do and what it can do for you in the future. So yeah, and and compounding takes so long, you know, like the first 10 years you see like nothing, and then all of a sudden it skyrockets, right? It's that it's that J curve. So like it's really hard to visualize that when this money's just sitting in the account. Like, why would I not spend it?

Speaker 28:09

Yeah, that's a great point. So moving to some of the unique challenges that athletes have, let's talk about those career lengths. So, how long is a typical NFL career?

Speaker 1 28:20

Yeah, depending on who you ask, right? The NFL is gonna give you a higher number, the NFL Players Association is gonna give you a lower number on career lengths. So we typically say about three and a half years is the average NFL career.

Speaker 28:32

Okay. So you're working three and a half years at extremely high pay, and then you're trying to make your money last how long?

Speaker 1 28:42

It's a great question. That depends on a lot of a lot of variables. So to keep it real, real simple, it's most players that don't play, you know, at least nine, seven, eight, nine, ten years aren't gonna have aren't gonna have the assets when they're done playing to not have to work again. So like when you're young in the NFL and you're not really making the three and a half year average, or you know, not even making it even like year five, six, it's all about sizing your emergency fund correctly, you know, getting enough assets long term, and then figuring out what your pivot's gonna be when you're done. And hopefully, if you've saved enough, you're only working to age like 50, right?

Speaker 29:25

Yeah.

Speaker 1 29:26

Because you're able to let the compounding do its thing in the back end as long as you're getting a job that helps you sustain. So that's that's the beautiful picture, you know, that that would play out. But yeah, the the career length is wild. I mean, I think you see it in the media, it's like you the assumption is that every single pro athlete, you know, never works again when they're done, I think, just based on you know salaries and what guys get paid. And yeah, you get an amazing head start on life. Like I would never say you don't. It's a head start that almost everyone wishes they could get in life, but the career length is very short. I retired from I retired from football at 29, right?

Speaker 30:07

Oh my god.

Speaker 1 30:08

And had to go and do my next thing after after that being my life for 15 years of my life, my primary job, my number one thing, and then I had to pivot, you know.

Speaker 30:19

Yeah, but that's I'm sure there's like a whole process of grief in that too.

Speaker 1 30:23

Yeah, I had I had a weird grief process because it was during COVID.

Speaker 30:28

Oh no, I know.

Speaker 1 30:29

So I thought I luckily found a job really quick in the industry I really wanted, but then I essentially unhealthily, I just like dove into my work, right? I distracted myself from the pain of not being a pro athlete by working 60 to 70 hours a week every week, you know, from my house during COVID.

Speaker 30:50

So that's a pretty bad transition, Jeff. I'm sorry, you have to experience that. My goodness.

Speaker 1 30:56

I I mean I feel bad for my for my wife who I was living with at the time as my girlfriend. She's the one that really had to experience that transition for me.

Speaker 31:04

Yeah.

Speaker 1 31:05

We we talk about it a lot still, but yeah, the the short career length and transition out, it's different for every athlete. And it's just it's it's a really hard thing to go through, even though you made a lot of money, it's still just mentally and emotionally you're you're losing a part of yourself.

Speaker 31:23

Yeah. Are there some people? I mean, I love that you kind of had an interest already narrowed down, but are there some people who are just completely lost whenever they have to make that transition? They have no idea what they want to do next.

Speaker 1 31:36

Yeah, to be honest, there are, unfortunately. Um, and it's I never put the fault on the athlete in that situation, right? Like, to for a lot of people to play at the highest level and be part of the 1% of the 1%, you can't have a plan B. Like, you have to be all in on plan A, or like you get the little bit of creep of doubt in the back of your mind that I'm not fully invested in what I'm doing. And certain positions in the NFL and certain pro athletes, you literally have to have that mindset to be able to do what you do on a daily basis. So it's cool having a plan B. And you know, I we always try to tell our clients and people that that are athletes to you know network a lot, you know, use like we call it using your jersey while you have it, right? You can get in rooms that most people can't get into to make connections, thinking about you know, the playing when you're done playing.

Speaker 32:32

Yeah.

Speaker 1 32:32

But you you truly can't put too much time when you're playing into your next thing, or you're gonna shorten your career by not putting enough time into your main thing.

Speaker 32:40

It's a really interesting thing to think about too. That again, it's just if you're not in the world, it doesn't really cross your mind. As far as privacy and safety concerns go, I think this is something that comes up to my mind, even like if you are famous to some extent, like I almost imagine that long-term you'd kind of always be a little bit more of a target in various ways. Are there ways in which people need to like financially plan to potentially have more security via, I don't know, all the different ways in which you can buy yourself more security? Um, what is what is that manifest like for people in this realm?

Speaker 1 33:20

Yes, it's it's a very scary thing for a lot of pro athletes and their families, to be frank. And the the culture of sports gambling and how accessible it is has made it even worse because now so many people have an incentive to literally come after you if they lose money based on your performance that they're eager to find out where you are and to find out ways to get to you. So it's it's it's frankly scary. We have a lot of athlete clients um that think about this all the time, and there's been many, many stories recently in the news of you know, players' homes getting broken into while they're at away games. Like perfectly timed because you know where they're gonna be and they get the address, you know, and they figure out how to get in there. So it's a very, very big concern that we deal with a lot, and we have many techniques that I'm actually not gonna go into detail on because I don't want people to learn about them. Um, but there are ways to hide where people live based on how you close on a home using different LLCs, different trust structures that we do a lot for clients. Um, there are companies you can hire that essentially sweep the internet daily to make sure all your information is off the dark web and not publicly available for you and your family. So you can't your socials aren't out there, your addresses, all that kind of thing. And then the highest profile athletes need physical security now. Yeah. Like whenever you're in public, you gotta make sure that's what you're doing. And you might have to have a private driver because you can't risk your vehicle and your license getting tied back to your address when people see you driving around town.

Speaker 35:00

Oh my goodness. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 35:02

It's it's we we tell our athlete clients it it is the price of fame, it is the price of what you do, that this is the reality, but you just gotta you gotta take it seriously on the security side.

Speaker 35:12

Yeah. Wow. So we've hit on a lot of really good topics for similarities, differences. I do want to touch on probably the biggest financially related topic we all have to deal with, and that's budgeting. So these folks are making a lot of money, you know, not all of the money. They do still have limits, but they can take care of their basic needs. How does budgeting look a little different for a pro athlete?

Speaker 1 35:40

First thing is in the name. We never use the term budget with a pro athlete.

Speaker 35:44

Oh, you trick them.

Speaker 1 35:45

It's not a trick. We call it a spending plan, right?

Speaker 35:48

Okay, nice.

Speaker 1 35:49

Because budget to a lot of people means constraint. And for some people, it has to mean constraint. For a pro athlete, you don't need to constrain your spending. You're making enough where you could buy whatever you want. But a spending plan is like, hey, how do I plan to spend my money so I don't go off of that plan?

Speaker 36:07

Does it look a little like the 50-30-20 breakdown, or does it completely follow its own set of rules?

Speaker 1 36:14

It kind of follows its own set of rules. So at a very, very high level, what we use is called the 40-40-20, which is a little different because it's not after tax. So we say 40% of your gross income going to tax, right? You're in the highest tax bracket. 40% is gone. 20% is what we want to keep to spend on yourself and share with family. 20% of gross income. And the goal is a 40% save rate while you're a professional athlete.

Speaker 36:44

That is so interesting. I never would have guessed that breakdown, but that makes a lot of sense. So 20% to cover both you and the people you love with your income.

Speaker 1 36:53

Yeah, which is it's the goal. You know, not everyone can get there based on how much they're making, but I mean, within by 2027, a rookie in the NFL is going to make a million dollars a year base salary, right? So $200,000 is kind of the hope that you can stay below, you know, your first year in the NFL or to the to then set you up for later. But the 40% save is really what we're shooting for. That's setting up your future self for later. So to keep under the 20% spend, right? Again, it's not a budget, it's a spend plan. The key is, and it's one of the hardest things to do, especially as a young athlete, is figure out what you value, you know, and what you prioritize and not drift from it. Not let the Joneses come in and pull you out of what you think you value and prioritize for your money.

Speaker 37:45

Yeah. Well, this has been a really great conversation, Jeff. I feel like we've touched on a lot of different things. I love hearing your perspective, your personal experience with it. I think it's awesome that you have like found your little space in the world to be able to work with pro athletes because this is strangely such like an underserved population on, I should say, like fiduciary financial advisors. Um, so that it's really cool what you're doing. And I appreciate you sharing your time with us today to talk about that overlap and those differences.

Speaker 1 38:18

Yeah, happy to. Again, we've been trying to get this together for for a while. And I mean, you you hit on the head, like there's so much similar for really anyone starting out their financial life, whether it's our third decade participants or someone that just signed an NFL contract or an MLB contract, the fundamentals are all there, right? There's just more at the edges that are just slightly different.

Speaker 38:39

Yep. Yeah. I I kind of have some takeaways from this conversation, just as a snapshot of kind of all of the things that apply. Um, boring is good as far as the your investing method. It's good to have a boring investing method because they work. You want to automate your good behavior, you want to have a good emergency fund, regardless of whether you're making a little or a lot. Um, follow that investing order where you attain your company's match, et cetera. Move through that. Um, beware of lifestyle creep and make sure that you are spending according to your actual values and not just social pressures. And the value of starting early and investing in financial education early. And just, you know, we're all living our own unique path. We don't want to compare ourselves to others because we all have very unique circumstances that we're dealing with. So live a life that's yours. And yeah, those are our actionable takeaways. So again, thank you, Jeff. I appreciate it. And uh we will have a couple of resources linked in the show notes as well for listeners who are interested.

Speaker 1 39:45

Thanks for having me out. Appreciate it.