NFL Money Game: Broke to Filthy Rich

After the NFL Draft, a lot of 20-somethings found themselves instant millionaires. So for a kid who just last month was probably eating Ramen Noodles in a dorm room to possibly eating lobster and shrimp in September, how do they make the right decisions on what to do with their money so they don't end up broke at the end of their career?

Tanya Marchiol is the CEO and owner of Team Investments Inc. (www.teaminvestmentsinc.com) a real estate and consulting company that helps rookies and pro athletes early in their career take care of their money and learn how to make the right choices when it comes to investments and spending. Marchiol has worked with everyone from Jamarcus Russell to Donovan McNabb and has a couple if clients in this year's draft including projected top three pick, Glen Dorsey.

We caught up with Marchiol before she jetted to NYC for the NFL Draft to talk about what she does for the athletes, what kind of advice she gives for handling money, what athletes buy that make her cringe and her book about being prosperous.

So what exactly do you do for these NFL rookies?

Originally, what I started out with was strictly real estate, so for my rookies coming up, what I do is I go around the country, no matter where they go, no matter what team they're traded to or picked up by and find them their personal family home. That was truly the basis of Team Investments. It has since in the past ten years merged into so much more. Now what we do is really, the first thing we do is make sure our client's credit is really where it should be. A lot of times, it really is just the guys haven't established any credit. Because you're in college you don't know what you're doing and you may pay your electric bill or your phone bill, but you don't have a lot of bills so your credit really isn't established. So whether we're establishing or repairing, it doesn't matter, we really take credit and teach you how to leverage your money with your credit because obviously if you have good credit you can do so much more than if you don't. So that's the first thing we do. The second thing we do, we establish their corporations and we establish all of our corporations out of Delaware.

Corporations? What does this do?

What this does is three things: One it gives them complete anonymity in any assets that they have, whether it be a car, a house, it doesn't matter; everything is put under their LLC. Two, it gives them tax benefits. Now instead of just being paid on a W-2, they really are running their life like a business, all of their expenses, all of their dinners, all of their travel, all of their houses, all of their cars, everything that they do now goes into their LLC. This establishes running their life like a business and having the tax benefits. Then three, it really gives them more protection, because you have complete anonymity, let's say you have a house in California that you're not at but when you're in season and a postman comes up and slips on your driveway and tries to sue you. If your house is the only thing in that LLC, that's all they can sue for, they can't sue you personally. So it establishes protections, it establishes tax benefits and it establishes complete anonymity. So we really do that as well. Then we deal with their personal family homes and in their personal family homes, and it doesn't matter if you want a house for your mom, whether you want a house in your hometown or whether you want a house where you're playing. A lot of times we don't push to buy where you play.

Yeah, because it's not guaranteed that they'll be playing there their whole career, right?

It kind of just depends. There a lot of guys, say like in the Bay Area, that might just sign a one-year deal and it's not beneficial for them to buy there because it's so expensive. One of the things is teaching them when to buy and when to rent. It's not always about buying a house; it's truly about being smart and leveraging your money. I always say rent if you have to rent but buy when it makes sense. So for my client Bryant Johnson, he just got traded from Arizona to San Francisco for a one-year deal for $2 million; it is not beneficial for him to buy a 1300 square foot house that's going to be $700,000 in the Bay Area. That's just stupid. So we helped him find a rental that made sense. So a lot of it is just relationship establishing; teaching them when to do certain things. Now really what I do, it's a lot more education than it is just real estate. A lot of what we do is teach the guys, "Hey, let's get you into a cash flow position." Where maybe you own an apartment building and that apartment building is bringing you $10,000 a month. So now you're living on your cash flow instead of on your game check. Then your game check can be given to your financial advisor and invested in for your long term gains because your short term gains are already happening with your real estate cash flow. So that, in kind of a nutshell is what we do at Team Investment Inc.

What mistakes do you see rookies make with their money?

Well, when you go from having nothing to having something, you don't realize that a million dollars is still not a lot of money. So you think you can do everything on that first contract, and really we have to slow the guys down a little bit and teach them, "Look you need to invest right so that in the long run you can do any and everything you want." Because it's just not about having money for you. It's about having money, I call it generational wealth, but having money for your kids' kids. It's about investing the money that you've made now, correctly, so that when you do get done playing, you can do whatever you want; whether it's to run a business or not, it doesn't matter, because you've invested properly. So I think [a key] is really teaching them to slow down, maybe not buy the four cars and the four houses and all the jewelry and give all your friends money and really think about, ok, I have a million dollars, which after taxes is $500,000. How do I manage this $500,000 properly so I can do the things I want to do in the long run?

Do you give advice to athletes who want to start their own business or do something silly like launch a record label?

Absolutely we do. So much of that happens and you know, again, once you get to that point in your career where you can do anything you want, if you want to trick off $100,000, then that's on you. But when you're first starting out, it really is, "no you can't do that, and you really need to do certain things that are going to bring you in money to make you that money." So yes we definitely do. And the nice things about my relationships are I really create that friendship with the guys. Being a former professional athlete and knowing what they go through and being able to relate and establish that friendship, for me is crucial. So a lot of times they'll come to me for advice that they wouldn't go to their financial advisor for. Because they know I'm going to be nonjudgmental, they know I'm have my own; They know that I can look at their stuff and say, you know, you really shouldn't be doing this, you should be doing this. So I do a lot of consulting pro bono just because they're my friends.