Just Google your name, what comes up? Well for most people, it might be a career accomplishment or their LinkedIn profile. For professional athletes, you will be able to find exactly how much money they made, what team they played for, and probably guess how much they paid in taxes. Those tax bills are high and everyone wants their piece of those big contracts. So, let's play this out, you are a state where MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL teams visit frequently. You would be crazy to

Burned out and ready for the next big thing. You may be in your 40s looking to take chips off the table or in your 60s ready to spend more time at the lake. Retirement planning for entrepreneurs will give you the peace of mind that the move you are making is the right one for you. A solid retirement plan is key to an overall wealth management plan for business owners. In this blog, we are going to show you how to build and maintain a retirement plan. Retirement Planning for

I owe how much in taxes? I could feel the horror on the other end of the phone after they learned they owned hundreds of thousands more in taxes. The only way to avoid these situations is with proactive tax planning. Proactive tax planning is the actions we take over the course of the year to avoid any surprises when implementing tax planning strategies for business owners. In this blog, we are going to give you a roadmap for proactive tax planning. Proactive Tax Planning I l

Every year the MLBPA or the Major League Baseball Player's Association speaks during Spring Training to players. Every year the messaging sounds the same and usually has some combination of this: "You will be a former player a lot longer than you are a current player so make sure you understand all of your benefits." One thing I realize now more than ever before is retirement planning as a professional athlete starts with understanding service time and league benefits. Player

Arguably the biggest misconception athletes have is the difference between what their contract says and what hits their bank account. We...

I walked up to the rental car counter, insurance in hand. I thought I was prepared until the agent asked for my credit card. You see I had just signed my first professional contract and I didn't have a credit card. After all, I was 18, had no credit, and had just signed my first employment agreement. It was just one example of the nuances that came with being a professional athlete. Over the years, I could name a laundry list of things that popped up where I would think, "No

Let me set the stage. You go from being able to barely afford Chipotle to being able to buy anything. You go from never considering that...

The line between amateur athletes and professional athletes is blurred. It used to be: · One is paid · One is not paid Today it is: · Both are paid · Each are paid in different ways Welcome to the ever-changing world of amateur sports, where players are (finally) compensated for the revenue they bring to their schools. Something that has taken far too long but has provided athletes today with financial opportunities not seen by previous players. Those

"This is the big leagues"! My exact thought as I was walking aimlessly through the Detroit Tigers' clubhouse in 2011. I was a 20-year-old trying to figure out how this "big league" thing worked. It felt like every need I had was being met proactively by a world-class staff and clubhouse attendants. I never thought a clubby would help me save thousands of dollars on my taxes. Yet, that is exactly what happened when a clubhouse attendant, in passing, asked if I was contributing

"I am sure your phone will be ringing with opportunities." This is what I was told. The phone never rang...I had to pick it up and call. That was my reality. This was the start of my transition out of professional baseball. To understand this you have to know where I was coming from: I had played professional baseball for 11 years. I had started when I was just 18 and now I was 29. I had thought this baseball thing would last forever. So there I was 29 years old, no one calli

Tax deductions for business owners are a great way to reduce taxes. This blog is the top 5 tax deductions for business owners.

The day I had waited 18 years for had come, yet instead of excitement, I felt this wave of unknowns. You know, that feeling you get when a big moment is on the horizon but you also realize the stakes are as high as possible. That was me on draft morning in 2009. Now look, I would say I had a better education on the MLB draft than most potential draftees and I still felt that way. I had three high school coaches who were 10-year big leaguers with one, Andy Benes, having been t

Every April I get the same phone call. "Luke, you aren't going to believe what my CPA just told me I am going to owe in taxes." It is like deja vu every year. If this is you read every word of this blog. As specialists in wealth management for business owners, we have found tax planning for business owners to be the single biggest win for our clients. In this blog, we are going to give you a behind-the-scenes look at our tax planning strategies and implementation for busi

I remember my first big league spring training. The veteran leadership had let us know the Major League Baseball Players Association was coming in the next day for our spring meeting. A naive 18-year-old, I had no idea what that meant or what we would be talking about. That meeting opened my eyes to the sacrifices former players had made to pave the way for current players. Everyone sees the ever-increasing salaries but what many don't see is the greatest pension allowed unde

In 2015, my Dad was running a business in my hometown of Saint Louis, Missouri. He had been running this business for over two decades. In late 2015, he received the news that he had an aggressive form of cancer, and only a few short months later he had sold his business and passed away. He hadn't planned to sell his business. I saw firsthand the downsides of not having a plan. Business exit planning is the plan he needed. A business exit plan is only one part of financial p

On April 15th, 1912 the unsinkable Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean. It was reported that as the ship took on water the show on board went on. The pianos continued to play and the servers tended to dinner requests. This led to the catastrophic events that followed. These events happened due to a lack of preparation. The Titanic left port with enough lifeboats to hold 1,178 people. The Titanic carried 2,224 passengers. Risk management for business owners is how you avoid

Ok, let's be real: hiring a qualified financial advisor as a professional athlete feels like finding a needle in a haystack. It is estimated there are more than 300,000 financial advisors (loose term) in the United States today. Some are ok Some are bad Some are good Few very are qualified to help professional athletes Look, let's eliminate the handful of financial advisors that are not doing good work. That leaves us with a handful of financial advisors that are good people

I had more money on paper than ever before, yet I had more nerves than ever before. Yeah, that was me right after retiring from an 11-year MLB career. You see I had set out to avoid being one of the statistics we all see in the news, "Athlete loses everything". What I missed in my crusade to not become "that guy" was that retirement planning for professional athletes entails far more than just being smart with money. Wealth management for professional athletes is part art (em

When I was a kid one of our family activities was going camping, and I quickly determined my favorite part of camping. Playing with fire....

The elevator stopped and out I stepped onto a full floor overlooking Miami Beach. The view was epic but my mind couldn't take it in. I was there to "do my estate planning" ~ whatever that means. I sat down with my finance, watched a high-flying attorney walk in, and proceed to talk over my head for the next hour. I left that meeting feeling confused, a bit overwhelmed, and with a stack of documents I was supposed to review. I remember thinking, review what exactly ~ I have no