Small concern about DW4 and $$$

May 1, 2017, 11:25 AM

I was pretty sure DW4 was brought up to respect earned dollars. Good for him that he bought his mom a new luxury car--I hope a nice house is next on the list. But the $2000 shoes, showing up in a limo, that sort of thing...I hope it's just a small celebratory spending spree and does not turn into a problem later.

Way too many NFL players and other pro athletes end up poor after living too large. He and his family are set for life if he wants to be, but not if he goes off the deep end and blows it all.

"More than two-thirds (78%) of former NFL players are broke or financially stressed after retirement, and 60% of former NBA players go broke five years after retiring/"

Our own William Perry can attest to that.

Eye-opening: http://nypost.com/2015/06/14/how-pro-athletes-lose-everything-buying-cars-jewels-and-pet-tigers/

"You are barely out of your teens, and have been signed to a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract by a pro team. You can expect another $20 million to $30 million in endorsement deals, and are positioned to become a brand unto yourself: another LeBron, Brady, Kobe, Jeter.

What’s even more incredible? If you were to find yourself in this scenario, you would most likely wind up dead broke, if not bankrupt and homeless, by the time you turned 40.

“Lots of players are having financial trouble, but they won’t talk about it,” says ex-NBA player Adonal Foyle, author of the new book, “Winning the Money Game: Lessons Learned From the Financial Fouls of Pro Athletes”.

"Pro athletes go broke due to a constant series of bad decisions, and seemingly no amount of cautionary tales — from Tyson to Iverson to Holyfield to William “The Refrigerator” Perry — can stop them.

“Lots of guys are having trouble,” says Foyle, who also has a masters in sports psychology. “But they won’t talk about it. They think, ‘I don’t want to be one of those guys,’ and they’re hiding it.”

The litany of superstars who’ve taken themselves down is endless, and Foyle discusses most of them in his book: Mike Tyson, who tore through $300 million on multiple homes, cars, jewels and pet tigers. In 2003, he filed for bankruptcy.

Baseball great Curt Schilling made $112 million over 20 years, but went so broke that in 2013 he begged the Baseball Hall of Fame to return his bloody sock from a famous pitching performance
against the Yankees so that he could auction it off. (It brought in more than $92,000).

“What frustrated me was seeing the amount of difficulty players were having in my sport,” says Foyle, who spent 13 years in the NBA. “When I started talking to older NBA players and asking, ‘What is the landscape in retirement?’ the answers shocked me.”

Far too many of them, he found, had not only failed to plan for their future, but lacked a basic understanding of money management.

“Almost none of us come from wealthy families,” Foyle writes. “The vast majority of us do not even come from middle-class families. Instead, we sign multimillion-dollar contracts as 20-year-olds with little or no financial knowledge.”

In a 2009 Sports Illustrated report, ex-NFL player Raghib “Rocket” Ismail described what it was like to sit in a meeting about his financial future as a very young, naive athlete: “I once had a meeting with JPMorgan,” he said, “and it was literally like listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher.”