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In this episode of the AWM NFL Podcast, host Riccardo Stewart is joined by Jeff Locke, Zach Miller, and Sam Acho to explore the playbook for achieving multi-generational wealth for NFL athletes. They dive into how athletes can leverage their human capital—physical, intellectual, and social—and outline the crucial steps for managing income, taxes, spending, saving, and investing. The team emphasizes the importance of having a strong support system, from financial planners to wealth advisors, to ensure long-term success beyond sports.
Key Highlights:
- The concept of human capital—physical, intellectual, and social—and its role in generating income.
- The importance of tax management and how much athletes can expect to pay.
- Strategies for spending and sharing income, including a 40% savings rate.
- The importance of investing income for future prosperity.
- Key protections through insurance and estate planning to safeguard wealth.
- Building a financial team including certified financial planners and advisors.
Quotes:
- "Your human capital is how you can earn income." – Sam Acho
- "Giving unlocks the grips of greed." – Zach Miller
- "40 percent is what you need to try and hit to be setting yourself up for life after sports." – Jeff Locke
Creators and Guests
Host
What is NFL Players' Podcast?
The podcast by NFL players for NFL players. Each week, we break down the biggest events in football and how they directly impact a player's career and money.
Join Former NFL Veterans Sam Acho (Bills, Bucs, Bears & Cardinals), Zach Miller (Seahawks & Raiders), Jeff Locke (Vikings, Colts, Lions, 49ers), and college coach, Riccardo Stewart, for a raw and unfiltered conversation about the game, the business, and how players can achieve generational wealth.
Riccardo Stewart: Hey, I want to
welcome you guys back to another
episode of the AWM NFL podcast.
My name is Ricardo Stewart and I'm
your host and I'm joined with Jeff
Locke, Zach Miller, Sam Accio.
These are my friends.
Now here's what happens.
Every weekend, right?
Soon as the game is over in college,
football, NFL, heck, even, even, um,
high school, the coaches get together,
they watch film on the opponent, and
then they put together the game plan
and then you get the game plan and then
you present it in front of the team of
going, if we can execute these things.
We will be successful.
We believe there's the same thing.
There's the same game plan that
you need to create and sustain
multi generational wealth.
And today I want to be able to kind of
at a 10, 000 feet level, look at what
is that game plan in order for NFL
athletes to be successful and creating
and sustaining multi generational wealth.
And so I'm going to kick it around to
you guys and I'll start first with this.
You got to start with money
and what we say is you got to
put money in its proper place.
Money is just a tool to pay for
the things that you want and to
impact the people that you love.
It's just a tool.
Sam, how do I begin to even create value
for myself to be able to make money?
Sam Acho: What you create value is what
we like to call your human capital.
And to break it down simply, it's
three parts of your human capital.
There's a physical capital.
There's your intellectual
capital and your social capital.
The physical capital we talk about a
lot with the athletes we work with.
It's your ability to earn
income using your body.
People would always say,
man, my body is my business.
My body is my moneymaker.
So the way that you eat, the way that
you sleep, the way that you train,
the way that you sacrifice in certain
times for certain seasons, in order
to try and invest in your body to try
and make the most amount of money.
Possible, but it's not
just your physical capital.
It's also your intellectual capital,
your brain, your mind, using your
mind to make money or to make income.
Think about it.
Sometimes the people who started
the businesses that are the apps of
your use that you're using, they're
using their mind to make money.
Intellectual capital could be something
as simple as going back to school and and
said, okay, how do I get my education?
So I can work in an industry
when I'm done playing.
That I can use my mind as a moneymaker.
Then lastly, your, your social
capital, it's a, it's almost
like your network, right?
Your network and your net worth are
interrelated, but that last name
meaning something when you text
someone, when you call someone walking
into a room, it means something.
And so your social capital is
sometimes we say, man, people were
thinking about playing or not.
It's like, man, play as long as you can.
Cause when you're an NFL player,
People open doors for you.
Maybe you played in college.
People open doors.
So that social capital is a third piece,
physical, intellectual, social capital.
Your human capital is
how you can earn income.
Riccardo Stewart: Okay.
We got to have human capital,
be able to create value.
And then now teams, companies,
brands, they pay me for that.
Now, now I begin to get paid.
I have income.
What now happens when I start
getting that gross income, Jeff?
Jeff Locke: know, there's a reason they
call it gross, coach, it's because it's
discussing what happens next, which
is the tax man comes and takes theirs.
So no matter what, right,
you got to pay taxes.
No matter what TikTok tells you,
what Instagram tells you, you're
paying taxes on your income.
There's just ways to maneuver
to try and pay as little as
possible over your lifetime.
So whether it's.
Income off the field, income from
the team, income from other sources.
It's getting taxed before you can
actually go and use it for other things.
Riccardo Stewart: Okay.
So I created this value for myself
with my physical, my intellectual,
my social, and then I got to
pay the man for our NFL guys.
Usually it's going to be about 40%.
You're going to go to taxes.
And then now I have this cash and
I got this money and how do like,
what's my next step now when it
comes to my use of money, Zach?
Zach Miller: Well,
you're going to spend it.
Uh, I know that's couldn't be the most
fun part, but you can also share it.
And so Ricardo, I know you say this
is giving unlocks the grips of greed.
So share is hugely important to, to every
NFL player that I've seen, that I've been
in a locker room with is sharing is huge.
And whether that's family helping
out family, the people that got you
to where you are or other causes,
things that are important to you, that
money's a tool to be able to give.
Then there's that spend part.
That spend is if you hit, if you
take nothing else away during your
NFL career, hit a 40% savings rate.
So what does that give you?
Left a spend rate of 20%, 40, 40, 20.
You tax man's gonna
take 40 or around there.
40 is gonna be your, your save.
And then you can spend 20%,
you're making millions.
So that spending rate, that
spend, that's a lot of money.
You can still buy really nice
house, really nice car, stay in
nice places, eat at nice food,
all those things you can spend.
But the number one thing that's going
to give you more money in the future,
kind of paying your future self is
controlling that spending number.
And that is if you hit that 40
percent savings rate as Jeff is
going to talk about next, that allows
you to save it and then invest it.
So I'll let Jeff take that away.
Riccardo Stewart: Get it?
Jeff Locke: Yeah.
Cue me up.
Great.
So the 40 number, we did not just
pull that out of our butts guys.
Like we've worked with athletes for
now going on more than a decade and
40 percent is what you need to try
and hit to be setting yourself up for
life after sports and to be setting
up your family for generations.
We call this the multi
generational wealth sketch.
For a reason right you got to save a
big chunk of your money while you're
playing In order for it to last and
be able to take care of people now
and people in the future So this is
what one of the hardest things to do
is to hit that 40 number because 40 to
tax 40 going to save and then as zach
mentioned If we can live and give off
of that 20, we're in a pretty good spot.
Riccardo Stewart: That's great.
I'm, I'm listening to this plan, right?
And this is like when the special teams
coordinator gets inside the meeting room
and he draws it up on the screen and
he goes, this guy's going to block him.
We're going to have him kick out this guy.
And then we're going to get this touchdown
and almost like, Oh, you're human capital.
You're going to create value and
then you're going to get income.
And yeah, the tax man's going to take
is, but like Zach says, you're going to
spend some, you're going to share some.
And Jeff, you're going to
invest some and save some.
Everything's going to go great.
But we do know this, just like the
special teams coordinator, we go, Hey,
we got to actually go block real humans.
And it doesn't always go as planned.
I mean, there's a way
that this could blow up.
And the way that that can blow
up is one bad investments.
Another one is liability.
If you, or even death and disability, if
you're not alive, you can't make money.
If you're, if you find yourself in a
position where your body can't perform
the way because of injury or so forth,
okay, you need to have protection.
So there's gotta be the
appropriate insurance.
You gotta have the state planning.
You gotta make sure you have the
correct people that are giving you
advice in terms of your investments.
There's a lot to be able to protect.
And even then.
Like you need a team, Sam, I
want you to just kind of wrap
the whole picture up and go on.
Who are the type of people?
Cause it doesn't seem like it'd
just be one person to do all these
things that athletes need to hire.
Sam Acho: before I answer that,
Ricardo, I just want to talk about
the importance not just in financial
advice, but in life about a team.
There was a situation we had in
my family where there was like a
medical emergency with my little
one and we had to call an ambulance.
It was a very scary situation.
And when the, the, Medics came, came to
our house, and it wasn't just one person.
It was to the first person came in and
assess situation and was checking out
my son and making sure he was okay.
But then another person was talking
to me and just going through the
process of, okay, here are the steps.
What happened a document?
Let's write it down, right?
A team, even when I was at the national
championship game, I do stuff with ESPN.
I was covering the game
and I was doing my work.
But also, in addition to do my
work, I wanted to go watch the game.
I couldn't go back there by myself.
They had certain things
I need to do in place.
I need to go.
I had someone with me a team.
In order to make sure I needed
to get to make sure I got
to where I needed to get to.
The importance of a team
is integral and monumental.
It's hard to do things.
It's not wise.
To do things alone.
And so when it comes to financial
advice, especially when it comes to
the money that you're making right
now or the money you're about to
be making, you need a team and that
team can't just be one person, right?
It consists of what we call CFP
certified financial planners.
It consists of accountants, CPAs It
consists of certified private wealth
advisors, chartered financial analysts,
people who spend their entire day.
You talk about special teams meetings.
These are the analysts.
These are the guys who spend
their entire day with you.
Doing what, uh, Belichick and
then was doing is five gate.
Just looking through that's five
gate, but they were looking through
and studying opponents and watching
what is happening in the market.
You need a team, right?
People who can talk to you about
what is your human capital look like?
People can, that can talk to you about,
okay, you want to start that foundation.
Let's actually build a team around you.
And so when it comes to having,
even, even think about what you do
as a football player, even as an
athlete or as everyone's listening.
Rarely do you do it alone, right?
People say you want to go, you
want to go, want to go far, you
go together, go with the team.
And so those are the people
that you need, right?
Those are the types of people
that you need if you want to
build multi generational wealth.
Riccardo Stewart: All
Jeff Locke: this might be my favorite
episode yet, Rick, just because
there's so much special teams talk.
You guys have dropped it like three
times without me even prompting it.
So I really appreciate the
shouts here today guys on teams.
Riccardo Stewart: I feel like that's
exactly what, what, what, you know,
giving true holistic financial advice is.
It is like special teams because it's
something that people don't think about.
Until something actually goes wrong.
And then the people who do think
about it, they know how to plan well.
So just to kind of summarize multi
generational wealth, it starts with money.
Just being a tool to bless the
people you love and care for
the places in which you live.
You create value by yourself.
That's your human capital,
physical, intellectual, social.
You got to pay the tax man.
And so understand the tax game.
And then there's the cashflow
is that talked about.
You can spend it and you can
share it both really good.
40 percent of that taxes, 40
percent of that is save and invest,
which is what Jeff talked about.
20 percent you get a chance to spend.
And when it comes down to it, you want
to make sure you protect your assets,
that you make sure that you have the
appropriate insurance and so forth and
proper planning, and then making sure you
have a team of expert as Sam talked about.
If you have questions of
going, how do I get this team?
One, can you guys tell me more about
taxes, more about spending any questions
you have, please reach out to us.
You can shoot us a text or give us a call
at six zero two nine eight nine five zero.