Carroll says a major hurdle advisors face is convincing a young athlete that he is not likely to keep earning the kind of money he is being paid at the start of his career.
"When they're in their early 20s, they think they are invincible," Carroll says. "They think, 'So if I make a bad decision, I've got four years to make the money back.' Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't."
Football players tend to have the shortest careers, retiring around age 26 after a little more than three years in the NFL. A financial plan must take this into account.
It's easiest to influence players when they are young and signing their first contracts-before they have gotten the taste of living the high life. That's when they can still be persuaded to avoid buying gigantic houses, $100,000 cars, yachts or jets.
"It's much harder when you're the second or third financial team brought in," says Cole. "It's very difficult to cut spending when you've been dealing with a certain lifestyle for a number of years."
Cole does not blame celebrities' problems on their jobs, but on their youth and inexperience. "If professional athletes started their careers at age 30 or 35, the results would be different," he says. "Any of us, being young and given all that money, would not know what to do with it."
Not every athlete's circumstances are the same. While the top basketball and football players go from college student to instant millionaire overnight, baseball and hockey players generally don't make as much early in their careers and can struggle financially when playing on minor league teams. Tennis players and golfers can wind up spending more on travel than they earn.
"The instant millionaires are the ones who seem to get in the greatest trouble," Mirkine says. "You are talking about, typically, a Type A person used to taking risks on the playing field. They will also take risks where money is concerned."
Former football pro Jimmy Verdon, a seventh-round draft pick of the New Orleans Saints in 2005, saw that first hand. "There were times you would see players making bets with each other, and it would be for, like, $30,000 and up, on stupid games that didn't even mean anything," he says. "Me, I just wasn't going to do that."
Because celebrities' careers and their earning potential are so different from the average person's, it is important for anyone advising them to have some training and experience.