Posted on 03/02/2023 6:22:39 AM PST by Red Badger
Former NFL wide receiver Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson has made a series of surprising remarks about money in interviews over the last few weeks, including that he once lived at his former team’s stadium for nearly two years.
In an interview with Fox Sports host Shannon Sharpe, Johnson claimed that he saved more than 80% of his career earnings by not buying fancy cars and buying fake jewelry, despite earning nearly $50 million from his playing days.
“Fly private?” Johnson said during the interview. “I ain’t flying private. Spirit, put me on Spirit, exit row, window seat. That’s all I need. As long as I get from point A to point B, I don’t need private.”
He said that an athlete’s goal should be to get to a point in their career where their name becomes bigger than anything they can purchase.
“My name itself, Ochocinco at one point, even still to this day, is bigger than — why am I driving a Ferrari?” he said. “Why am I driving a Rolls-Royce when I’m Ocho? Oh, we talk about jewelry and watches and chains; I never bought real anything when I was playing. Never. What was the point? What am I doing it for?”
“The women don’t deal with anyway because of who you are, right?” he continued. “And then the other women who are really doing their homework, they’ll Google how much you making already. Why am I buying a $50,000 watch? $80,000 watch? What time is it real quick, please? … The time is free. So what am I paying for it for?
“Everybody’s caught up in image and looking a certain way and being rich. It’s me. It’s pointless,” he continued. “You know how hard it is to live like that all the time, consistently, and be fly every day?”
He noted that the previous generation of celebrities all had their time in the sun but they could not sustain it forever because it’s impossible to do.
“You gotta remember, I stayed at the stadium the first two years because I didn’t want to spend no money,” Johnson added. “What’s the point? Why are you telling me to go rent a house, go buy a house, or go rent a condo when everything I need is right here in the facility?”
“Showers, cafeteria, TV, couch, gaming system. What’s the point? I was so locked in. It wasn’t about having my own space,” he added. “I needed that one-year lock-in to catch the rhythm. In the second year, I got that rhythm.”
LOL~~~
NFL should hire him to go to every NFL team and talk to the rookies about money management.
I remember when he was playing; he came off as a loud mouth braggart. I guess he was a lot smarter than I thought...
Save.....................
Trash Talk is part of the game.................
Buy non-irrigated top grade black soil farmland.
$50 million in riskless US treasuries would pay you $3 million a year.
I bet he’s a passive investor. Probably hired a financial advisor, one recommended by the player’s union, who put him in a nice safe mutual fund. He pays the financial advisor 20-30k a year and lives on easy street the rest of his life. Smart man.
“Municipal Bonds, Chad. We’re talking Double-A Rating, best investment in America.”
It's one of the many lessons he taught me for which I'm very grateful.
With pro athletes it's not difficult to see why they'd buy expensive things after having grown up in the projects. But Chad was smart!
“$50 million in riskless US treasuries would pay you $3 million a year.”
Passive investments are the way to go if the goal is to preserve capital—that should be the sole goal of NFL players—no point in being greedy.
I would not recommend owning property for rent—though owning a few houses in different locations for family use would be fine.
And most players come from poor backgrounds and have no experience or skill with handling money. You come from nothing and suddenly you have two five or ten million dollars it seems like all the money in the world. But it goes quickly when you’re supporting the extended family and your posse and others who are just hangers-on.
A friend lived next door to an NFL player. He was on our local team for his first contract, had a very nice, but not huge house in an upscale suburb. Got traded, and received a huge new contract from his new team in a new city.
The guy simply abandoned his original home. He still owned it, but stopped cutting the grass, doing maintanence, and we think - stopped paying taxes. It sat empty for 3 years. It eventually was hit by lightening, which caused a small fire. The town stepped in to force a sale.
Bizarre. Maybe he felt he was too rich to worry about a $750K home, or maybe he had only so much brain capacity to think about things outside football
I’ve never figured out why anyone needs a posse or a entourage................
To spend your money
Same. I grew up pretty poor. Without a big garden and hand-me-downs from cousins and older siblings, we would have really been hurting.
I’ve never wanted nothing more than to be comfortable. Now we live in a decent older house, have 3 vehicles, and are putting away some savings every month. Blessed.
A lot of pro athletes are like top musicians or artists — the competitive mindset is what gets you there. The culture I was raised in (and I suspect yours too), you let your game and play do your talking. For other cultures, self-promotion (It ain’t braggin’ if ya CAN DO IT!!!) is considered a virtue and something to do IF YOU CAN without clowning yourself...
I remember his “can’t cover me list”. Pretty funny actually.
I suspect that what happened was the business agent negotiating the ‘set for life’ 2nd contract that every NFL rookie wants, told his client “we’ll handle the sale of your old house, kid” after negotiating the deal.
The agent then forgot about it. The agent or an affiliated company may have been the actual owners, also. If the agent didn’t have another client on that team, the property may not have been thought about at all.
Mom was a farm girl born one year before the depression. Her father had a funny story; the banker was giving grand-dad his farm loan and asked if he needed a little more for kids clothes (9 kids) Grand-dad said no, seed money is fine, they may be naked but they’ll be chubby.
LOL! People then had a much better perspective on what is really important in life.
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