Juggling Dynamite

78% of NFL player, 60% of NBA players go bankrupt within 5 years of retirement. The reasons are typical human behavior: sudden big wealth is overspent, wasted and mismanaged by the players themselves and their spouses, and by the self-focused financial “advisers” brought in to mangle manage the money. See: Five reasons professional athletes go bankrupt.

Eugene Lee, CEO at ETL Associates, discusses the personal economics of NFL players from an agent’s perspective. Here is a direct video link.

Agent Lee: “We have a duty to align our clients with the right financial advisers.”
With 3/4’s going broke: easy to say, hard to do. Clearly.

Financial success over a lifetime is a marathon of personal discipline.
It requires advisers and managers that are willing to do the right thing and offer the right advice for the client (the opposite of investment salesmanship) even when it is not sexy or popular, and clients who wish to hear and adhere to disciplined advice year in and year out without getting seduced or distracted by shiny things and fast talkers. Hence the financial failure rate is very high across all walks of life. The above graphic from Behaviorgap.com says it all.

The extractive mentality is booming in college executives.

Presidents of U.S. colleges and universities fundraise with donors, preside over graduation ceremonies and provide his or her university with long-range strategic vision. They are also paid handsomely for their work. Forty-two private college presidents earned more than $1 million in 2011, according to a new analysis by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The median total compensation for a college president in 2011 was $410,523, up 3.2% from 2010. Of the 550 presidents’ salaries that were included in the analysis, 180 took home more than $500,000 in 2001 compared to 50 in 2004. Here is a direct video link.

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research talks with Charles Biderman about realistic growth prospects looking into 2014.

Here is a direct video link.