Originally Posted by kane

Sports Illustrated did a great story on this. Basically about 75% of all pro athletes are broke within 5 years of retiring/leaving their sport.

That number is a little bit misleading though. Take for example the NFL. The average NFL career lasts 3.5 seasons. So if you are a third string guy making 300K a year for say 4 years that means you made 1.2 million over your career. After paying agents, lawyers and taxes you probably have about 40-50% of that left. So say you have half of it left. That means you made about 150K a year for 4 years. Even if you save 75% of that you aren't going to be rich when you leave the sport.

For every guy that makes millions there are a bunch that make the league minimum and don't last very long. You have to factor all of those guys into the mix.

The article also said the other big reason is divorce. These guys get married then when the career is over a lot of them end up divorcing and losing a big chunk of their money. They also make very bad investment decisions. Instead of investing in solid, boring stuff with decent returns they want clothing lines and night clubs and things that are sexy, but almost always fail.

It was a pretty eye opening article.