30 for 30 Broke Reflection
By: Jake Schaefer
The root of the problem is spending too much money and trying to be cooler then “the next guy”. All of these sports athletes that went broke made a ton of money. These guys made millions upon millions of dollars. They were not underpaid so there should be no reason for them to go broke right? But that’s not the case with these athletes. These guys wanted just about everything nice they saw. For example a new car came out and it was $60,000. For a regular person that would be way too expensive because they weren’t making enough income to afford that, but for a pro athlete they thought to themselves that they had a contract for $10,000,000 so they definitely had enough money to buy it. They would go out and purchase a new car without even thinking of the price. The athletes would do that for just about everything they wanted so before they knew it they were out of money. All of these athletes expenses were way to high for them to handle. The athletes that ended up going bankrupt tried to “keep up with the joneses”. That was not a smart idea. “ keeping up with the joneses means to try to outclass the next guy with luxury items like fancy cars and jewelry. The athletes should’ve thought about what their savings were before they bought all of those things. It would’ve been smart to make a plan. A regular person after hearing these stories could learn to make a plan of spending and get help for creating that plan if they need it. If I was a financial planner I would handle the pro athletes money wisely and only let them spend a certain amount each month. Definitely some of the worst financial decisions for the athletes were having a ton of kids. It’s a lot of money to care for a kid especially when you have 9 and are paying $17,000 a month for child support. This is why athletes declared bankruptcy and had no money left to spend.