04-13-2016, 12:43 PM
(04-13-2016, 12:12 PM)OrlandoBengal Wrote: The reason the bulk of those investments fail is because they are not smart investments to begin with. If you're smart with your money, and don't trust your cousin Ted to be your Financial Manager, the money can last a very long time. As others have pointed out, they do also go to college. There are plenty of athletes who complete their education either while they are playing, or go back to school after the career is over (I think they can actually go complete their degree for free in most cases). There are plenty of ways to set yourself up for life after football.
Many have been through actual financial advisors, not their cousin Ted. Some of them were very legitimate franchises and such that just didn't work. Some were good investments on paper, but bad management of the company sank their money. Any venture capitalist will tell you that almost 75% of the companies they fund eventually fail. You win by having one or two really win, but these sports guys can't afford to take a couple losses like these big firms can.
This was just based around the investment in companies comment someone made earlier. The reality is if they wanted to live off 60k a year they could take all the money and move it into a safe low return investment strategy. However, they are human and it's tough for any human to change their standard of living severally after becoming accustomed to a certain way. I'm not talking spending millions a year, but to go from spending 200k a year to 60k a year is a big lifestyle change. They tend to have to take on riskier investments to try and maintain a high standard of living.
It is not unique to football players really, look at the population as a whole. Most are grossly under prepared for their requirement.
