Once the champagne bottles are popped and the excitement of signing a multi-million-dollar pro-ball contract sets in, athletes have traditionally been left to their own devices to manage their money, often when they’re fresh out of college with little or no financial literacy or expertise to back them up.

The results can be devastating. Take former NBA star Antoine Walker, who learned about the perils of lavish spending the hard way, running through the $108 million he had earned during his 12-year professional career in just two years after he retired.

“I never understood the value of a dollar,” the former Boston Celtic told the “I Am Athlete” podcast, blaming his desire to live like rapper Jay-Z for his out-of-control spending, which included legendary gambling and the purchase of homes and luxury autos. He declared bankruptcy in 2010.

He isn’t alone. A stark 78% of pro athletes go broke after just three years of retirement, according to business management firm NKSFB. Fortunately, Walker regained his financial footing in 2013 as a TV basketball analyst, and he’s now a consultant for Edyoucore, a company that focuses on teaching financial literacy to pro athletes.

The firm has a roster of retired athletes who teach their peers how to avoid his missteps by taking control of their spending, making smart investment decisions and wisely selecting the right advisors.

The firm was the brainchild of financial advisor Drew Hawkins, a three-decade veteran of Morgan Stanley who started the firm’s global sports and entertainment division. The experience made him realize how much financial trouble professional athletes get themselves into due to lack of basic financial savvy. Those insights led him to launch Edyoucore in 2019.

“Pro athletes squander billions of dollars each year. I wanted to come up with a meaningful solution to provide education we could offer to teams and individual athletes,” Hawkins says.

The message is resonating with the general managers of many NBA teams and a growing number of NFL franchises, which have hired Edyoucore to teach their incoming rookies and more seasoned players comprehensive financial literacy. “We teach them to make their wealth outlast what can be a short pro athlete career,” says Hawkins, whose clients include the Baltimore Ravens, the Washington Wizards, the Washington Mystics, the Detroit Lions, the Detroit Pistons, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Portland Trail Blazers.

“We teach athletes, ‘You’re not just a professional athlete; you’re the CEO of your own enterprise,’” says Hawkins, who adds that it’s important to give them financial training in their rookie year in order to start their career off right.

The athletes come from backgrounds “where they don’t have exposure to money management. They may have been poor, never driven a nice car, eaten in a nice restaurant or lived in a lavish home before. And here they are at 17, 18 or 19 with millions of dollars for the first time, but no training to deal with it,” he says.

To establish trust and minimize any conflicts of interest, Edyoucore offers no money management or financial product sales. “General managers hire us to teach a variety of our programs. We may teach six different classes in a season and make sure to give athletes the time to schedule one-on-one meetings with us,” Hawkins says. “We aren’t coming in in pinstripe suits. We meet players where they are.”

The firm’s classes, which are season-long, have catchy titles like “Ballin’ on a Budget,” “Rookie to CEO,” “What the FICO?” One comprehensive investing course is designed to educate players on the importance of long-term investing, market fundamentals and prudent investment vehicles.

“Many times athletes have no idea what they’re invested in or what their ownership stake is,” Hawkins says.

The “Family and Friends” class goes into the particular challenges players face, which can distract them from their best performance and drain their nest eggs. To help them avoid pitfalls, Edyoucore teaches them to set critical spending boundaries.

Another course is “Drafting and Managing a Winning Advisory Team,” which teaches players how to perform due diligence on their financial advisors, CPAs, tax attorneys and managers.

“We take them through a fairly extensive list of questions to ask and teach them fee structures and how to select and manage a winning management team,” Hawkins says.

That’s fundamental to pro athletes’ financial well-being, since they can be magnets for con artists and swindlers.

In 2021, former NBA player Chandler Parsons said his financial advisor, a now barred ex-Morgan Stanley broker, had made payments from his account without his approval. That broker was arrested earlier this year for defrauding Parsons and three other players out of millions of dollars. Parsons also filed a $5 million arbitration against Morgan Stanley for the fraud. Drafted in 2011 by the Houston Rockets, Parsons earned a $94 million contract from the Memphis Grizzlies, but was sidelined in January 2020 after he was injured in a car wreck, allegedly by a drunk driver.

Michael Lindo, who works with the NBA’s Detroit Pistons under the title of “director of player and family engagement,” says Edyoucore’s classes, coaching and audits are critical to players’ well-being.

Lindo says that the Pistons believe “in treating players holistically. It’s not just about sports. We don’t want players worried or distracted by unnecessary money issues, so getting them the education they need to help them succeed is a no-brainer for us,” says Lindo, who has been using Edyoucore to teach players financial literacy for two years.

Worrying Expenses
Edyoucore also offers a “FinFit” report, which is designed to uncover concerning expenses or activities in an athlete’s financial life, so he or she has time to correct the issues or overspending in a timely fashion.

“We go through and conduct a forensic audit, looking at 11 different areas of their financial life,” Hawkins says. The firm uses a CFP, a CPA and a certified fraud analyst in each FinFit review.

“The typical report goes back two years and looks transaction by transaction at spending, credit card use, investments, outside earnings and taxes. It’s mind-boggling the things we’ve uncovered,” he says.

In one case, the firm helped an athlete reverse course on aggressive spending that would have bankrupted him. “He was on target to be out of money in three years, despite making $36 million over his lifetime,” says Hawkins.

The audit also discovered the athlete was 46% invested in highly speculative alternatives despite being a conservative investor who wanted capital preservation. He and his financial advisor were able to correct the problem, according to Hawkins.

Edyoucore also assists financial advisors who have pro athlete clients. “We see ourselves as financial coaches, so there are definitely situations where we can be brought in to help educate the athlete about the value of an advisory relationship, financial planning and the investment process, which is our sweet spot,” Hawkins says.

He adds that many pro athletes, 18- to-20-year-olds earning millions of dollars a year, don’t fit advisors’ typical demographic.

“Athletes are unique clients. They’re not used to being told no. It’s tough to tell someone used to being on TV anything, let alone how to spend their money. That’s our specialty.”