Planning for Financial Security after the final whistle

Sport and the rest of the world don’t always line up. You wouldn’t find someone leaving school or university and leaping straight into a director level position paying £150k per year as a starting salary.

And you certainly wouldn’t find someone earning £500k at 35 suddenly finding their potential income hurtling back down towards zero, just because of their age.

It’s just not how things work in the corporate world.

But it is how things work in sport. Before I was Rowan the financial advisor, I was Rowan the rugby player. Semi-professional for the Sharks over in South Africa. And while I never pulled down that £500k a year, I did see top-level professionals experience what happens when your earning potential goes from very high to almost nothing overnight.

And it taught me three lessons that will apply to any sportsman, whether you’re Roger Federer or a semi-pro scrum half.

You need to think about today

It’s a real privilege to earn hundreds of thousands of pounds in your twenties. You’ve worked hard, committed to your sport, and you’ve been rewarded. But the problem is that when we’re in our twenties, we’re not thinking about our forties, and certainly not our seventies or eighties.

But you don’t even need to look past the next 12 months to see the real value in financial forward planning.

Because what happens if you get injured tomorrow?

What happens if you fall out of favour with your coach and don’t get a new contract?

What happens if the club goes bump (and believe me, there are hundreds of professional footballers who thought that would never happen)?

Yes, you want to maximise your quality of life and your lifestyle today, but you need to take the right steps to safeguard yourself – and your family – in case something happens to you in the very near future.

You need to think about tomorrow

Maybe you’ll be lucky. Maybe you’ll never so much as sprain an ankle playing top level sport. You’ll be loved by coaches and owners and fans, and get new and lucrative contracts. Your club will be successful, and the money will keep flowing year after year.

And then you hit 34. Or 35. 40 if you’re an absolutely peak physical specimen.

Your career will naturally wind down, and even if you keep playing as a veteran, you won’t earn as much as you did at your peak. Maybe you’ll be one of the vanishingly small number of ex-professionals who gets a job in punditry, or you’ll move into coaching. But even the best-paid coaches and managers in sport don’t pull in as much as the top players.

Your earning potential is massive. But the window to maximise that potential is small. So you need to have one eye on the future – will you have enough money to retire and live a life of luxury? Or will you have enough to start your own business, and lay the foundations for success in a second career?

The right plan can be the difference between a life spent on the golf course, or having to start over in a brand new career with middle age rapidly approaching.

But most of all, you need to start thinking now

Whether you’re thinking about today or tomorrow, the most important thing you can do is to start thinking now.

You’ve been handed an amazing opportunity to set yourself up for a life of financial security, and as any pub pundit will tell you, the best sportspeople are the ones who convert their opportunities.

Starting now gives you the chance to take advantage of compound returns, which we explain in this blog, and you don’t need to be on Lionel Messi’s wages to make it worthwhile.

We’ve just put together a plan for a professional sportsman, and even though he’s not on a Premier League level wage, we’ve still shown him just how achievable it is to plan for a happy, comfortable life after sport.

If you’re thinking, we’re listening. Get in touch with Arkenstone today, and we’ll be happy to talk through your options.

Rowan Howse, Financial Planner