Oh, I got your point. I wasn't arguing with you; I was more going off on a tangent. I agree with everything you said, for the most part - but I would point out that while it's true most NFL players don't literally wind up working at MacDonald's, the National Bureau of Economic Research reports that 1 out of 6 do declare bankruptcy, and 78% experience some degree of severe financial stress within a few years of leaving football. So I think it's a fair point.
I know you've told that story before, and I have no trouble believing it. I'm sure it's not an isolated incident, either. And yeah, I agree that nobody could reasonably expect a 20-something millionaire to live a 50k a year lifestyle. But I don't think it's asking too much to hold them accountable if they don't do anything at all to set aside some money or give themselves some financial security after they retire. Those are basic money management skills we expect every young adult to be able to learn - why should we expect a kid who works at an average job to manage his money responsibly, but not expect it of an athlete? With that kind of money, there's no reason they can't make some provisions for their future, and if they don't, then yeah - I do blame them the same as I would anyone else.
There's a huge middle ground between "living a 50K lifestyle" and blowing every penny you earn within a few months. I see no reason that an athlete shouldn't be able to find a comfortable spot somewhere in that middle ground. Yes, I know they haven't learned many good lessons from their life experiences, but part of being an adult is learning how to make adult decisions. If you don't, you suffer the consequences, same as anyone else.
I also agree that the league bears some responsibility for helping players plan for the future, but how much are they supposed to do? How much can they do? They already have programs to connect players with financial planners and other professionals to help them plan for their future and make the transition, don't they? How good are these programs? Could they be better? That's an honest question, because I don't know the answer. i just know that the league does have such programs in place.
It's just odd that this subject came up tonight, because it parallels a conversation I had with our attorney a few hours ago. He was driving his family down to Florida for a few days in the sun, and called me from his car to discuss a case he's handling for us. Even short discussions always become a long conversation with him, and we chatted for about an hour. One of the things he said, that he's told us before, is how much he loves working with us. He keeps telling us that he's never had any clients who do so much to help him prepare - says most people just come in and dump a pile of stuff on his desk and say, "here, sort it out and sue somebody or something." He said that he loves working with us because when we bring him an issue, we've thoroughly documented every single detail and compiled it and indexed it to the last punctuation mark; he gives us a great rate because he doesn't have to pay paralegals to help him sort our cases out - we're his paralegals, and he says we do a better job than any other client he's ever had, and better than a lot of attorneys would do.
And every time he tells us that, it just blows me away. Because we don't think we're doing anything special at all - it's just plain common sense. We spend dozens, scores of hours making sure we research every detail, look up all the applicable laws, find precedents, vet our case to see how the relevant laws apply to it, check each other's work, and then pass it on to him to let him review it all and decide on the best strategy to go forward. I can't understand why anyone would hire a top notch attorney to help them resolve matters worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars, and do almost nothing at all to help him prepare. I just shake my head and wonder what the heck people are thinking, that they don't take responsibility for doing everything they possibly can to cover all their bases for the future.
I just tell him that the way we look at is is that we're all a team - my wife and I can't litigate, but we can research and compile data till the cows come home. She's a former med student; she's a freaking genius at it. He, on the other hand, doesn't have time to waste on that crap - that's a total waste of his talents. He's the legal expert and the courtroom gunslinging litigator - that's his role, what he brings to the team. Our role is to do everything we possibly can to make his job as easy as it can possibly be, so that he can arrive at the best possible outcome. Just plain common sense.
And yeah, I was the same way when I was in my 20s. And my wife is 38 now, but she's been the same way for as long as I've known her, which was her mid-20s. We're not legal or financial geniuses by any means, but we plan ahead and do everything we possibly can to ensure the best possible outcome for our futures. We're not rocket scientists, and we're not rich, and probably nowhere near as successful in life as a lot of other people on this forum, but we take responsibility for our lives and try to ensure the best possible future for ourselves. We make mistakes that cost us a lot of money, and probably do a lot of things completely wrong, but at least we try our best to do the smart thing.
It's not that I don't sympathize with people who are unable to do that, or even unwilling to do it - but I have to admit, my sympathy is somewhat limited. We weren't born knowing how to do that. We learned it on our own - granted, with a lot of good examples from my German father and her Chinese parents, who taught us a lot about hard work and responsibility, but still. We both left home on our own when we were teenagers (me at 17, she at 16) and built our own lives. If other people choose not to take their futures as seriously as we do ours, that's their prerogative, but they have to own that and live with the consequences of their decision.
