3 Rookie Mistakes That I Made Financially When I Went Pro

I’ve had the fortunate pleasure of being a professional athlete for over 10 years. It’s crazy to think how fast it goes by but as my dad said when I first got drafted ,”You are closer to the end of you career than the start of it.” No one can prepare you for what it’s like to become a professional soccer player. You can get all the insights, lessons, advice, etc from people that may know more but it’s still different once you experience it yourself. From a financial standpoint, I vividly remember my rookie year and realizing that this was a lot more money than the money I saved reffing games as a side hustle during my high school years.

I had to immediately learn on the fly but with the help of my family and building a solid team around me, I was able to have a good head start from a financial standpoint. Despite all the help and the solid foundation, I still regret some of the financial decisions I did make. I wish I could go back in time and correct some of these things as I could have potentially been in a stronger position for it but in hindsight it’s all part of the process. The reason why so many athletes end up in unfortunate financial situations after they retire is because they never got the right head start when they initially came into money. Many of the financial principles that would help us create long term wealth, we aren’t exposed to. Combine that with bad spending habits, poor investments, emotional blackmail, and shark financial advisors , you can be in a world of trouble.

It’s important that we share lessons so that we can learn and evolve. I was fortunate enough to not have any serious rookie mistakes but still feel I could have done better had I known more at the time.

With that being said, here are my rookie mistakes:

Putting My Signing Bonus In A CD

Depending on how you look at it, this wouldn’t be necessarily a mistake. However I consider it a mistake because of the alternatives that I could have done with the amount of money that I received as my signing bonus. For context a CD is a certificate of deposit, which is essentially a savings account that you can’t touch for a certain amount of time with a slightly higher interest rate than a standard savings account from a bank. The only benefit putting my money in a CD provided me was that I wasn’t allowed to touch my money or else I would have had to pay a penalty. The interest I made from the CD which was for a 12 month period was less than $300 dollars. There were so many other things that I could have done with that money had I been knowledgable about the options that were out there. In hindsight, it was a lot better than spending it on things I don’t need but still I regret that decision.

Building Credit

I didn’t have a credit card until I turned pro. I had a standard debit card from my bank account that had a checkings and savings. I didn’t have any money to spend nor make nor pay off a credit card. However, when my roommate and I were trying to get our first apartment to rent. It was damn near impossible. Why?! NO CREDIT. I remember arguing with them, explaining to them we just signed professional contracts where we were getting paid very respectable salaries and I’m not sure how they expect us to have credit with it being our first real jobs. It didn’t matter they wanted to proof because a number of different situation. Understanding the ins and outs of credit, could have made things easier upon becoming pro.

Finding My Own CPA

As a rookie, you ask a lot of the older players for guidance in how to go about things both on and off the field. Knowing our circumstances as athletes, we have a different structure in how we go about our taxes. Jock tax, which I didn’t know about until later, reporting appearances and bonuses, etc. In order to be proactive, I asked a couple of teammates who they used for CPA to help with their taxes. A CPA = a certified public accountant. Not doing any of my own research, I used the CPA because all the other soccer players were using that individual. Unfortunately, my business relationship with that CPA wasn’t the right fit. The communication wasn’t up to par with what I needed at the time due to my inexperience dealing with taxes.