60% of NBA players bankrupt 5 years after retirement

[Best Buckeye]

Shee-it. the biggest problem is you can't fix stupid.
All the money these guys make and they end up broke only because of their own money management , or lack of it.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

First and foremost, is that handling money is a skill. A skill that can be taught/learned. It is not unlike driving a car. Most people do OK with a car under normal circumstances. They don't have too much trouble managing a vehicle at or up to 80 MPH. That doesn't mean that they are ready to get behind the wheel of an open wheel race car hitting upwards of 200mph.

Not a good analogy. While driving faster indeed makes handling the car harder, having more money doesn't make managing your budget harder...having less money does.

A 10 million salary has a heluva nice sound to it, but let's face it, thats not what they make. Everyone has a hand out including the NBA players union, their agent, the tax man, a professional staff including lawyers and accountants.

Excuse me if I don't feel sorry for their expenses. On a $10M salary, a player still takes home well over $5M (35% for taxes, 10% to the agent--which is a deductable expense, and whatever is paid for an accountant or lawyer, neither of which should be full-time). It's not like they have nothing left when all is said and done.

Then you get the pressure from friends and family to do things like buy houses, ease their burdens, etc... They see the published salary and figure that you are taking home 10 million a year.

If a player is stupid enough to be buying friends cars, houses, etc., then he need to get new friends quickly. As for family, the only thing the player should be concerned about is his parent(s) and wife/kids. Siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins should be blown off.

Next comes the peer pressure. Athletes are competitive and want to outdo one another. So they have to have the latest/best cars, houses, luxuries.

Fuck that. If a player is moronic enough to try to outdo others, then his ass deserves to go bankrupt...it's that "bling-bling" mentality at work again.

 

[Buckeye Buh Nim]

Not a good analogy. While driving faster indeed makes handling the car harder, having more money doesn't make managing your budget harder...having less money does.


Excuse me if I don't feel sorry for their expenses. On a $10M salary, a player still takes home well over $5M (35% for taxes, 10% to the agent--which is a deductable expense, and whatever is paid for an accountant or lawyer, neither of which should be full-time). It's not like they have nothing left when all is said and done.


If a player is stupid enough to be buying friends cars, houses, etc., then he need to get new friends quickly. As for family, the only thing the player should be concerned about is his parent(s) and wife/kids. Siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins should be blown off.


Fuck that. If a player is moronic enough to try to outdo others, then his ass deserves to go bankrupt...it's that "bling-bling" mentality at work again.

First- It is harder to handle that much money. You have to be more disciplined with it. You have to spend more time/resources watching taking care of said funds. If you don't it will be gone before you know it.

Second- I am not asking you to feel sorry for their expenses. I am just illustrating that that 10m contract doesn't mean what their friends family and other people with their hands out think it means. 35% for taxes? where do you get that number. Its more like 45-50% for taxes. (including state and local, and they do get hammered by local taxes)

I agree with your third and fourth points. All I am trying to explain is why that bankruptcy figure is probably correct. There is no sympathy for them from this poster.

 

[morbitzerker]

sorry buh nim, the only houser I know is Doogie.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

First- It is harder to handle that much money. You have to be more disciplined with it. You have to spend more time/resources watching taking care of said funds. If you don't it will be gone before you know it.

I'd rather lose 50% of my $10M salary than 50% of my 100K salary...it's a lot easier to get by on $5M than it is on $50K. I just can't follow how you think having more money is harder then having less money. If I had $10M, I would have zero problems managing it, because I would only use what I need (like I do now), and with all that money in reserve, I'd never have problems.

You're equating having more money (a simple numerical sum in a bank account) with actually having more physical, tangible resources, like automobiles or property. Yeah, if I had 20 cars instead of one, or 10 houses instead of one, it would be more difficult to manage. But having $10,000,000 would be no more of a problem than would be having $100,000. It's a single amount of money.

 

[HailToMichigan]

Excuse me if I don't feel sorry for their expenses. On a $10M salary, a player still takes home well over $5M (35% for taxes, 10% to the agent--which is a deductable expense, and whatever is paid for an accountant or lawyer, neither of which should be full-time).

Given the headlines, I'd say that's actually a very legit full-time expense for many professional athletes

 

[methomps]

I'd rather lose 50% of my $10M salary than 50% of my 100K salary...it's a lot easier to get by on $5M than it is on $50K. I just can't follow how you think having more money is harder then having less money. If I had $10M, I would have zero problems managing it, because I would only use what I need (like I do now), and with all that money in reserve, I'd never have problems.

You're equating having more money (a simple numerical sum in a bank account) with actually having more physical, tangible resources, like automobiles or property. Yeah, if I had 20 cars instead of one, or 10 houses instead of one, it would be more difficult to manage. But having $10,000,000 would be no more of a problem than would be having $100,000. It's a single amount of money.

There are a lot more friends, family, and otherwise with their hands out when you make $10M.

 

[jwinslow]

When you make 50k, you have to think about what you spend. When you make 5000k, it seems like you don't have to watch what you spend... at least to a young person.

There are a lot more friends and family with their hands out when you make $10M.

and chances are, none are providing any advice for how to manage that money...

As for throwing out the race card yet again, wake me up when the "other" cultures stop burying themselves with credit card debt, car payments, etc... at about the same age.

 

[Tonyank]

at least they are dumping the money back into the economy

 

[Tonyank]

When you make 50k, you have to think about what you spend. When you make 5000k, it seems like you don't have to watch what you spend... at least to a young person.and chances are, none are providing any advice for how to manage that money...

As for throwing out the race card yet again, wake me up when the "other" cultures stop burying themselves with credit card debt, car payments, etc... at about the same age.

what about 5000000000000k

 

[Buckeye Buh Nim]

I'd rather lose 50% of my $10M salary than 50% of my 100K salary...it's a lot easier to get by on $5M than it is on $50K. I just can't follow how you think having more money is harder then having less money. If I had $10M, I would have zero problems managing it, because I would only use what I need (like I do now), and with all that money in reserve, I'd never have problems.

You're equating having more money (a simple numerical sum in a bank account) with actually having more physical, tangible resources, like automobiles or property. Yeah, if I had 20 cars instead of one, or 10 houses instead of one, it would be more difficult to manage. But having $10,000,000 would be no more of a problem than would be having $100,000. It's a single amount of money.

I am not equating having more money with having more tangible resources, I am saying that taking care of more money is a lot harder than taking care of a little money.

I also am not discounting that while you have the big bucks that other things in life won't be easier. (putting food on the table, not bouncing checks, etc...)

"If I had 10M I would have zero problems managing it."

Interesting lots of people say this and end up broke quickly. Its not just limited to NBA players, but lottery winners, etc...

There is a reason Lawrence Funderburke wrote his book Hook Me Up Player.

I don't know you personally, and maybe you wouldn't fritter the money away, but I do know that people in general spend more as they make more. And they have trouble putting the breaks on their spending as their resources dwindle. I bet that your spending habits changed greatly when you left school and started making more. (I don't know this for sure, but I think its a safe bet) That is you started dining out instead scraping up coupons for pizza or eating Ramen every week.

You cite a 100k salary figure. I know(read work with) a lot of people who think that if they just made 100k per year, they would be set for life. Yet as you probably know, this isn't necessarily the case. (note I make no assumptions that 100k is what you make, I am just using the cite to continue a point)

Look, I agree with you on your central point. Its the players own short sightedness or lack of financial acumen that makes it easy for them to go broke. They should not be pitied, etc... But this statistic seems realistic.

 

[Buckeye Buh Nim]

and chances are, none are providing any advice for how to manage that money...

I bet there is plenty of advice on managing that money, and most of it ends up with you writing them a check.

 

[OCBuckWife]

I know how these people could save some money.

Besides the fact that players fork out all of this dough for houses, cars and cable bills you still can?t forget that many of them have multiple children from multiple women. This is yet another expense that must be accounted for and child support is one of those bills that doesn?t go away for at least 18 years. Again, you can see how 5 years removed from an NBA career with 2-3 child support payments a month and you could run out of millions pretty damn fast.

Wear a fucking condom.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

There are a lot more friends, family, and otherwise with their hands out when you make $10M.

And that obligates you to give out? Fuck that. You owe shit to no one, with the exception of your parent(s), if he/she/they even raised you. "Friends and otherwise" can go piss up a rope.

When you make 50k, you have to think about what you spend. When you make 5000k, it seems like you don't have to watch what you spend...

Whose fault is that? Exactly.

As for throwing out the race card yet again, wake me up when the "other" cultures stop burying themselves with credit card debt, car payments, etc... at about the same age.

Get off your PC high-horse.

Bankruptcy is a significant leap over having simple credit card debt, car payments, etc. Most folks who are in over their heads financially don't have extravagant houses, mutiple pimped-out SUVs, yachts, etc. Many get in debt because they get laid off or have reduced work, have unexpected expenses, etc. Now, are there a lot of folks--across all ethnic lines--living beyond their means? Absolutely. Hell, I see that shit here in Hawaii a lot, and that encompasses the Polynesians, the Asians, the Portugese, whites, blacks, etc., although it is somewhat more prevelent among those with lower incomes (and you can argue that their lack of income sometimes forces unwanted expenditures).

Still, the percentage of the population having to resort to bankruptcy is no where near 60%, and again, when players have all that money they should be able to "get by" a lot better than if they were making only 5-10% of what they're now making.

 

[Jake]

Perhaps we should get back to making sure every American high school student has to pass some basic economics courses in order to graduate?

Of course, the politicians don't like that idea. People who have no clue about economics are easily swayed by class envy and other emotional rhetoric, often to their own mindless detriment. They also go broke 5 years after retiring from the NBA or winning the Powerball jackpot.