Staying Wealthy with Sudden Wealth

Athletes climb a different mountain

In most careers, money is delivered in weekly and monthly cycles spread over decades of time. It takes most workers a lifetime to climb the mountain and reach retirement. 

As a professional athlete, the formula is reversed. Professional athletes receive some type of bag at the beginning of your climb. 

Players earn a large lump sum in a single time frame or become high earners for a compressed amount of time. 

This is called sudden wealth. Sudden wealth is not the problem. The problem to be solved is ensuring that sudden wealth lasts.

According to the CDC, people born in 2002 have an average life expectancy of 77. Males are slightly lower at 74.4 years of age and females are higher at 79.6.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2017/015.pd

To transform sudden wealth to lifetime wealth, athletes should become familiar with the concept of Now & Later. The concept of Now & Later means that some of this money is for right now, and a lot of this money is for later. If you spend all your money now, you will be rich for awhile, but not wealthy for the rest of your life. 

At APG we teach our clients that you really celebrate two birthdays each year. One birthday is your actual age, the other birthday is the age of your money.

Because you have to plan for being 45 on the money you were paid at 25.