How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke

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43 points·robg··8 comments

Really interesting article, well written, and all on one page.

Reminds me of this Philip Greenspun piece on early retirement: http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/

One of my favorite pieces of advice on not getting swindled I think comes from Oprah: always be the only person who can sign your checks. You'd be surprised how many people who come into sudden wealth give someone else they barely know the keys to the vault without a second thought.

The proportion allocated to REITs and Hedge funds is a bit higher in the Harvard and Yale allocations that Greenspun mentions.

Sage advice indeed.

In case you want to let SI make a few cents for your time, here's the article on their site: http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazin...

I can see clickability taking a cut but not the whole pie.

Shouldn't the article be rather called 'How people who make poor financial and investment decisions go broke?'

I don't think the fact that they are athletes is the deciding factor in their financial problems.

In the case of athletes, it gets exacerbated by the fact that they are often young, uneducated, distracted by their sudden fame and very visible.

And that they have nine kids by nine different mothers. (That is not hyperbole, that is an example from the article.) I'm trying to summon up sympathy but failing miserably.

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