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Money Smart Athlete Blog

The aim of the Money Smart Athlete Blog is to provide athletes worldwide with the tools to become money smart and help them make savvy financial decisions. We created this blog to transmit and share the knowledge we have accumulated as financial and business advisors during the past two decades.

Mental Health

Athletes, mental health and social media

Social media are online platforms that help you connect with people from all over the world, upload family pictures and like your friends’ vacation photos. You can find people from all over the world who share your interests and follow your favourite athletes. There is, however, the flip side to all that which we’d rather not talk about that much; up until the moment it affects us. Bullying, body- shaming, hate, abuse, racism, sexism and a host of other -isms have crept their way into the day-to-day reality of social media.

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May 11, 2022

Parenting, Social Issues and Philanthropy

Sport parenting: The importance of laying the right foundations and raising socially responsible adults

While many believe that the concept of social responsibility in sports is a recent phenomenon, it dates back hundreds of years to the Byzantine empire where chariot riders requested from emperor Justinian to pardon their followers, leading to weeks of rioting and bloodshed. Fortunately, the outcome of today’s social responsibility is not as vicious, but in principle, is the same as what it used to be when it first appeared. In short, athlete social responsibility is the ideology that athletes as role models and influencers, have a duty to society to take a stand and have a positive effect on their communities and society as a whole.

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Jan 26, 2022

Parenting

Peer Pressure and How to Help Your Child Navigate It

Peer pressure is a social phenomenon commonly linked to adolescence; where pressure or influence is exerted on an individual to follow their peers’ or social group’s behaviors, in an either positive or negative way. Peer pressure can be experienced by an individual as early as the age of 10, increasing dramatically during teenage years.

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Jan 19, 2022

Parenting

Sport Parents: Teaching gratitude to your kids

Gratitude is the state of being thankful, the readiness to show and express appreciation as well as return kindness. Everyone should be grateful for what they have, of who they are, of how they look, and for their life in general.  That is, of course, not to imply that we should not try to improve ourselves, our personality and our material possessions.  We should learn how to be thankful for where we are and who we are right now because that is the result of all our previous good and bad decisions.

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Jan 12, 2022

Financial Literacy, Parenting

Athletes and the importance of early financial education

A crucial part of professional athletes’ lives, is their ability to take optimal financial decisions at different stages of their career, in order to build their wealth and sustain their lifestyle after the end of their playing days. Money management is of course important for any average Joe but critical for a professional athlete and the special nature of the athletic profession.

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Jan 5, 2022

Editorials

January 2022 Editorial: Sport parenting- The importance of laying the right foundations

We will begin this year by discussing the importance of laying the right foundations, a particularly tough challenge for parents of young athletes. Our themes for this month will be early financial literacy, gratitude, social responsibility and peer pressure.  Our formative years are of the utmost importance since that is when we are equipped with the tools and knowledge to go out in the world. Children are like blank slates and the younger they are taught something the better they will understand it as they grow, which is why is important to educate your child financially at a young age.  

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Jan 3, 2022

Special Themes

Annual Rewind: The Money Smart Athlete of 2021

Greetings to all of our readers and happy holidays to everyone celebrating. This is a special one, as it is our final piece of a bizarre and tumultuous year. These last twelve months have been tough for millions of people around the globe who suffered from the pandemic and lost loved ones. We can only hope that 2022 will be better for everyone.

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Dec 29, 2021

Betting industry

The relationship between match fixing and betting

Both the sports and sports betting industries are vast in terms of value but also impact on the worldwide economy as well as society. In 2020 the global sports industry was worth up to $620 billion, while the sports betting industry was worth approximately $200 billion. Time and again we have discussed the impact of the sports industry around the world, whether through creating job opportunities, bringing fans together at sporting events, or motivating athletes break world records. In last week’s article, the impact of the sports betting industry was addressed, evidencing that sports betting is now part of the sports culture in such a way that the two industries have come to complement each other. For example, in England, betting sponsorship of sports amounts to more than £70 million per year, and many clubs in the English football league have been adamant that they could not survive without the income that they gain from sports betting operators.

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Dec 22, 2021

Betting industry, Special Themes

The betting industry: A cost-benefit analysis

Over the past decades, we’ve seen old ideas being replaced by new visions and conventional taboos becoming part of our everyday lives. One such taboo, that’s currently prevalent across our lives is sports betting. Back in the day, sports betting was viewed as a shady act usually performed by people viewed as outcasts of society, regardless of whether people of all income levels actually engaged in it. In today’s society, with some natural exceptions, sports betting is totally acceptable and is certainly something that nobody should be ashamed of.

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Dec 15, 2021

Betting industry

Money Laundering and Sports Betting

Money laundering describes the process by which criminals try to conceal the illicit origin of their money by making such proceeds appear to have derived from a legitimate source. A relevant United Nations study shows that about 2% to 5% of the world's GDP is laundered every year, which is around $800 billion to $2 trillion. There are many ways that criminals use to legitimize their income, with sports betting being one of them.

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Dec 8, 2021

Editorials

December 2021 Editorial: Sports Betting and Athletes

Betting or gambling is one of the oldest social activities of civilization. Gambling preceded history and record-keeping. The betting industry has been growing for decades. It was assisted by the digital revolution which rendered betting as easy as writing a text message and it was further boosted by the legislative changes in the US three years ago. Several market researchers believe that the market will experience meteoric rise over the next few years, with the size of the industry rising well over $100bn.

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Dec 1, 2021

Betting industry

Athletes, match fixing and illegal betting

Evidence of sports betting can be found as early as the beginning of competitive sports in Ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome. Today, growing digital infrastructure and an ever-increasing number of sports events have allowed sports betting to expand to a multi-billion industry. Any person, in any corner of the world, with access to a device connected to the internet can bet on the outcome of a variety of events taking place during a sports event.

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Dec 1, 2021

Special Themes

Athletes turned real estate professionals

In earlier articles, we discussed professional athletes’ unique traits and characteristics, and how those can be used to develop athletes into successful businesspeople and entrepreneurs. While such characteristics align with what you would expect from a financially successful individual, it’s clear that not all athletes succeed in their business dealings, while others take off by exploiting their traits and how they align with the competitive and fast-paced nature of certain industries. Specifically, in this article, we will explore how professional athletes’ characteristics align with the world of real estate and further discover those individuals who succeeded in the field of real estate after their professional careers.

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Nov 24, 2021

Special Themes

Athletes gifting property to family: Know the legal traps

 Gifts between members of the same family are quite common. In its simplest form, gifting, is the transfer of wealth and/or assets from one individual to another. Athlete examples include Kevin Durant, Tiger Woods and Anthony Walker. It is alleged that Dwayne Wade bought his mum a church; yes, an actual church.

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Nov 17, 2021

Financial Literacy, Special Themes

Athletes: How to get acquainted and benefit from the Real Estate market

Former US president (1933-1945) Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) said ‘real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world’. This statement is frequently recast and repackaged by people familiar with real estate. This article gives a brief overview of the real estate world in order to point out how it might be beneficial to athletes and how this line of investment might be ideal for them in terms of securing their long-term financial well-being.

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Nov 10, 2021

Athlete Career and Life Plan, Special Themes

Are real estate investments a good idea for athletes?

The process of setting up a financial plan, requires athletes to decide, ideally with the help of a trusted financial advisor, how their hard-earned money can be invested to generate even more money. While saving money can protect athletes’ wealth and should be the first priority in any financial plan, investing allows them to beat inflation and exponentially grow their money.

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Nov 3, 2021

Editorials

November 2021 Editorial: Athletes and Real Estate Investments

Athletes are encouraged to plan for their future early on. The short duration of sport careers in combination with the high earnings, deems early and efficient financial planning a necessity for athletes. A huge part of that is saving and then investing those savings in places that would hopefully guarantee athletes a healthy cash flow in their lives post-retirement.

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Nov 3, 2021

Athlete Career and Life Plan, Special Themes

Athletes – The time to plan your future is now

A famous Chinese proverb reads “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second-best time is now”. Time is you ally in achieving any goal, so the earlier you start planning, the better. This is especially true for athletes, who, as previously discussed, have short term sports careers and must have a post-retirement plan in place in order to transition as smoothly as possible into their new lives.

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Oct 27, 2021

Special Themes

How Athletes Can Build Multiple Revenue Channels

Over the past two years, we have all been tasked with navigating unchartered territories, due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. A catastrophe of unparalleled proportion, which nevertheless, left us with a lot of lessons that should be considered, as we try to shift towards the post-Covid era. As stated in previous articles, professional athletes have been amongst the hardest hit by this pandemic, not necessarily in monetary terms, but in terms of seeing their status quo being challenged. Athletes have to rethink the way they approach their financial well-being and have to recalibrate their strategy towards financial freedom. In this article, we seek to explore how athletes should plan ahead, learning from the lessons of the Covid-19 era, to emerge financially stronger and more independent. Specifically, we will focus on why the pandemic has made the case for the need of multiple revenue streams, and how such streams can be pursued by professional athletes.

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Oct 20, 2021

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