Quick, honest question: what would you do with $100 million? Would you invest it and retire for life, or would you slowly spend it away on the things you always dreamed of owning? According to former Miami Dolphins wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. in Florida, that massive sum of money can disappear much faster than most people realize. During a recent interview on The Pivot Podcast, Beckham opened up about the realities of earning huge contracts in the NFL and how misleading those numbers can be. While fans often hear about players signing deals worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, he explained that taxes take a huge bite out of those figures before the money even reaches their accounts.
“And I always explain this to people,” Odell Beckham Jr. said. “You give somebody a five year, $100 million contract, what is it really? It is five years for $60 million. You are getting taxed. Do the math. That is about $12 million a year that you have to spend, use, save, invest, flaunt, just being real.”
The former Miami Dolphins star went on to admit that he spent a good portion of his money on major life purchases, including buying a car for himself and a house for his mother. According to Beckham, everything adds up quickly, and making that kind of money last forever is a lot harder than people think. The former Miami Dolphins star also defended his lack of financial planning by saying that he spent his life mastering football, not learning about financial literacy.
While some people sympathized with Beckham’s difficulty of managing massive wealth at a young age, much of the internet was not as forgiving. “Sounds more like a you problem,” one user commented.
Others argued that this kind of thinking is exactly why so many professional athletes end up broke a few years after retiring. They pointed out that fame and talent do not last forever, and that saving and investing should be a top priority for anyone who suddenly comes into that kind of money, especially in a career as short as professional sports.
“But this mindset is why so many pro athletes end up broke,” one person wrote. “He says spend, use, flaunt and then casually adds save and invest as an afterthought. If you invested just half of that every year, you could live comfortably for life.”
Some commenters were even harsher, saying that the problem was not a lack of education but a lack of self control. “Spending eight million dollars a year for five years is not financial illiteracy,” another user wrote. “That is a mindset issue. He could afford a financial advisor, but he chose status over stability.”
