No offense or judgement meant to anyone if that’s your thing (to each their own). That’s just how I see pretty much all professional sports - the super bowl is just the poster child for it.

  • Phegan@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The players on the field have more in common than us than the billionaires who own the teams. Don’t confuse them for the actual rich class. Over an average NFL career most players make less money than most people will over their career, and they leave football with severely damaged bodies and minds.

    They are workers just like us, many of them go on to live in poverty, just like us. The players aren’t your enemy, the owners are.

      • Liz@midwest.social
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        10 months ago

        What’s the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars?

        It’s a billion dollars.

        You’ve still got way more in common with the players than the owners.

        • PwnTra1n@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          i have more in common with the homeless guy on the corner than the football players tho

          • Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Do you think someone can retire at 25 with 2.8 million dollars? They’d have about 40k a year to live on, so I guess it’d be technically possible as long as they didn’t mind moving back in with their parents, waiting for them to die and hoping the house wasn’t worth enough to cause a big tax bill that year.

            I’d be hard to retire (in the classical sense) at 60 with 2.8 million.

            • vortic@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              A very conservative rate of return on investments would be 5% per year. With $2.8M, 5% is $140,000/year. So, someone with $2.8M invested would, conservatively, earn $149K per year without touching the principal.

              • Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                Rate of return and dividends are not the same thing. Dividend payouts are usually closer to 2-2.5% for an index fund loke the S&P500. At those rates, you’d nees closer to $5 mil/$100k of desired annual income. For the regular stocks, in order to get that money, you’d have to actually sell shares, which means your earning potential off the stock decreases over time (in addition to the buying power of that money decreasing over time as well). It takes about $11 today to buy what would cost $1 in 1960…if we assume a linear trajectory for inflation, that $100k you’d pull in from that $5m would be worth less than $10k by the time our hypothetical athlete reached 75. While I can’t see into the future, i don’t imagine there will be many job opportunities for a 75 year old who’s been out of the job market for 50 years and $10k/year probably won’t even be enough to feed themselves.

                • vortic@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  Interesting. I didn’t realize that dividend rates are so much lower than rate of return. Why are they so much lower? Does that mean that your money is only growing at 2-2.5% in an index fund or does that mean that your investment is growing at the same time as you are taking out a portion of your returns as a dividend?

                  I’m just starting to learn about investing as I try to shift some of my savings towards long-term investments. I think I need to find a fee-based financial planner to get me pointed in the right direction.

                  • Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    First, I’m not qualified or certified to give financial advice. I can’t and won’t provide any investing advice… Basically, IANAL, but for investing instead of legal stuff.

                    So, say I start a publicly traded company called Goople. You buy 10 stocks in Goople for $100 per share. So you have $1000 total in Goople stick now. Since I’m a hypothetical business genius, the stock price quickly grows to $150 a share. You now have $1500 in stock value, but you don’t get a check for $500… you just have an asset that has grown in value. If you want to get $500 in cash, you’d need to sell some of your shares. Sometimes, you can buy and sell fractions of stocks, but for this example, we’ll say you can only trade full stocks…so at $150/share, you need to sell 4 stocks for $600…you’re broker will take a cut and you’ll likely have to pay taxes on that $600 so we’ll say you end up netting $520. Now you have some cash, and you have 6 shares of stock left. Now, originally, the stock going up $50 meant you made $500 dollars (increase in stock value x shares held). Now, if the stock goes up another $50…you only make $300 because you only have 6 stocks left. Now, even if the market rate stays the same, your absolute earnings have decreased. This is what makes selling stocks to love on untenable… the more stocks you sell, the slower your returns grow. Dividends are when the company pays you a quarterly or annual payment based on the stocks you own and the performance of that stock, even if you never sell a share. If the company has a bad quarter or year, you dont get paid either…sonif you’re trying to survive off dividends, you (or your broker) need to pay WAY more attention to the company’s financials and forecast or you might not have enough money to survive. Usually, companies want to pay the lowest dividends they can because dividends come out of the company’s profits. Smaller companies that are growing will pay little/no dividends because they want to reinvest that money back into the business to fuel growth. Additionally, many dividend-paying companies are running high debt ratios, so your dividend payments are likely to go down when interest rates increase because the company needs more money to service that debt. Rising intereat rates also make borrowing more expensive for you, so the easiest way to offset those dividend losses - going into debt yourself - is also harder to do.

              • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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                9 months ago

                You are correct and definitely using a conservative estimate, like you said. ETF/index funds have an average return of 7-10 percent according to a quick search. These are often considered one of the safest investments you can possibly make, too.

                • Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  Returns aren’t dividends. You can only capitalize those returns by selling your shares, which decreases the rate at which your portfolio grows and incurs additional tax liability.

                  • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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                    9 months ago

                    Yea but the point is that you get 140,000 dollars of return per year on 2 million dollars principal. You can easily cover the taxes and live pretty comfortably from that. You don’t need to grow your portfolio at that point if you don’t want to.

                    You could go the route of investing in stocks with dividends, as well. Most people who live off of their investment returns do a mix of both.

            • Anti_Iridium@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              What about the rest of that article, which said the median was 860k?

              They would have to risk more than 3 years of damage to even get the 40k

              • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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                9 months ago

                Construction workers have to risk 40 years of damage to get the same amount of money.

                40k is if you’re dumb enough to keep an that money in the chequing account

                • Anti_Iridium@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  Maybe the construction workers deserve more money?

                  Edit: It is also worth mentioning that if the median salary is 860k, and the minimum salary is 870k at one year, what are your chances for making that 3 years in comparison to making 40 as a construction worker?

                  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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                    9 months ago

                    Average career length in the NFL is 3.3 years

                    After making hundreds of thousands for a year or two you can still retire safely and live off the interests. 2.8m gets you 140k/year, you don’t need that much to live, even with 1m in the bank you’re safely making an extra 50k/year (about median US salary), allowing you to pretty much choose to take whatever side job you want no matter the salary to end up more comfortable than the vast majority of the population.

            • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              You can make more than that amount of money on interest alone so I’m not sure what you’re talking about.

      • Snapz@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Average doesn’t work so great here with those QBs at the top making $50m a year, bud

        • lp0_on_fire@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Surprisingly one of the quarterbacks playing tonight had a salary under a million. Though I expect that won’t be the case for him next season after making it to the Super Bowl.

        • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          The point is that for the amount of money being generated off of them playing a sport that harms their body they aren’t being paid properly.

          It’s a pretty solid comparison to the worker who gives their time and youth to be paid but typically rarely see a fraction of what they generate.

          NFL players make more money usually, but the comparison is apt.

      • Anti_Iridium@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Did you read the rest? The median (which means half makes less, and half makes more is 860k.

        That means if they get the crap beaten out of them, and save every single penny and don’t pay takes, they would have 3.4 million.

        As of 2015 80% went bankrupt

        I don’t do odds that bad.

        • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          A lot of them go bankrupt because they’ve never had money before and someone hands them three million dollars. They’re rich and famous overnight, with no financial planning experience, and they party like… well they party like the ballers they are. Football and basketball players waste so much money that the word “baller” is synonymous with someone who throws a lot of money around.

          But make no mistake, if someone handed you or I three million dollars, we could invest it and retire for the rest of our lives. They make a lot of money, and a lot of money all at once is worth a hell of a lot more than a lot of money spread out over a lifetime. But a lot of them make really poor financial choices too, because they’re just kids.

            • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              They get big fat paychecks when they sign their contracts. Lower paid players aren’t getting $3M all at once, but they get tens of thousands of dollars all at once, and it keeps coming every week. Even the lowest paid rookie players who only get the $750,000 rookie base salary get it over 17 weeks. That’s $44,117.64 every week for 17 weeks. That’s a fuck ton of money all at once, especially for a kid who has never had any.

              For reference:

              NFL Veteran Minimum Salary

              The minimum salary for NFL players with one year of experience is $870,000. It increases with each year:

              Rookie: $750,000
              1 Year: $870,000
              2 Years: $940,000
              3 Years: $1.01 million
              4-6 Years: $1.08 million
              7+ Years: $1.65 million
              
      • Phegan@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        First. You still have more in common with players than owners.

        Second what’s the average career length of an NFL player. Last I checked it was 2.5 years, may have changed. That’s 7 million over a career. Over a 50 year career, which most of us work, that’s about 116. Clearly upper middle class, but not rich.

        Many athletes leave the game and work labor jobs like the rest of us.

        Not saying they didn’t have a front loaded ahead start and also not saying they don’t have an upper middle class average. All I am saying is…the owners are your real enemy. We have more in common with the players than we do with the owners. The players are not your enemy.

      • Signtist@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        Yeah, at first I thought they were saying it evened out considering most people’s careers are longer than an NFL player’s, but even just 1 year as an NFL player nets more money than I’ll ever earn in my life. Several lose it all, but that’s from spending it on hookers and blow, not because they’re forced to live paycheck to paycheck.