Former pro basketball player and Rebalance Senior Vice President Dan Mavraides shares why saving and investing early is the most important financial move a student athlete can make.
Transcript
The college athletic landscape has changed tremendously with the advancement of name, image, and likeness, NIL. So, NIL has completely changed the college athletic landscape. Student athletes are now able to earn money and a lot of it by doing what they’re doing in the past, playing their sport and going to school, and they’re now faced with financial decisions that they haven’t seen in the past. So having someone in their corner that is thoughtful and strategic about how they can make the best use of these earnings during their very short period of time in college is important.
So the biggest issue facing student athletes earning income from NIL today is not saving and investing. You extrapolate this income you’re making into the future, thinking that it’ll always continue, but life doesn’t go like that. I have the personal experience of playing pro basketball and I’ve had high income earning years, and I’ve had low income earning years, and you’re in a very unique place now as a student athlete earning this income to save it and invest it and give yourself a better life overall, better career opportunities, the ability to be more entrepreneurial and make different decisions around businesses you want to create and really set yourself up financially for the long term.
If I could tell student athletes earning money from NIL one thing, it would be to save and invest early. The power of compounding for decades into the future is going to set you up for financial success if you remain disciplined to your strategy of saving and investing early. So these principles are valuable for any young individual, whether you’re an athlete or not. If you’ve come into an inheritance or any pool of money, creating a long-term strategic plan of how to save and how to invest those assets is what’s going to lead you to be successful.
