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NFL Players and Debt
I read and article that was in Sports Illustrated a while back with some amazing statistics; Within two years, 78% of NFL players are either bankrupt or facing severe financial hardship. This article points to the fact that the starting salary of even the lowest paid NFL players is $310,000 but in the second year it jumps to $460,000. With this kind of income it puts theses NFL players in the top 1% of all of the income brackets in the United States. So how does it happen?
One of the first things that most players do right when they sign a nice contract is to go out and buy a new house. They typically pay for the whole thing in full. While this sounds like a good idea. They are actually spending a significant amount of their sign on bonus. Most advisers of these players suggest that they instead put there homes on a 30 year mortgage instead of buying them all at once. The reason for this is that unlike most of us, NFL players careers are only three years long on average. Players will need to make their cash last longer while they are playing because they don’t have the typical 30 year career.
If you’ve watched any episodes of MTV’s “Cribs” you can see how they spend all of their money not only on their house, but also their cars. Everyone knows that a car goes down in value 25% as soon as you drive it off of the lot. So it should be no surprise that these players are loosing money on their new cars very quickly.
This hit home with me personally as my favorite quarter back growing up was Bernie Kosar. He had to file for bankruptcy protection last year claiming that he owed over 40 million more then he was worth. Lots of this includes credit card debt. Other NFL star have also filed for bankruptcy protection such as Andre Rison and Lawrence Taylor.
It isn’t always the actual players that run up the debt though. The Colt’s superstar wide receiver Reggie Wayne recently had a mistress named Natasha McKenzie. They had been messing around for a while. Reggie’s wife found out about it after catching wind of her running up a $93,000 credit card debt. You want some debt relief? Check out Indiana debt relief, virginia debt relief and michigan debt relief and know how to eliminate credit card debt. Don’t give your mistress your credit card number!