New money, new problems: Athletes and sudden wealth
A primer for navigating the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
You can’t spot it on the field or in the stadium. You can’t correct it in training. Or cure it with a dose from the team doctor. But it’s a malady an overwhelming number of professional athletes will face.
It’s called sudden wealth syndrome.
Enviable though the problem may sound, it’s one with a growing body of research behind it, and impacts that stretch beyond the financial.
Coined in the 1990s by wealth psychologist Stephen Goldbart, “sudden wealth syndrome” refers to a cluster of reactions and symptoms people experience as a result of significant wealth events.
“It boils down to human behavior,” explains Lauren Ahern, a director of private wealth premier solutions with Raymond James. “When you go from having only this much to having exponentially more, there are emotional implications alongside the financial ones.”
Those implications can be serious, ranging from guilt, stress and indecision to anxiety, paranoia and depression. And the ensuing coping mechanisms can be even more destabilizing.
While Lauren emphasizes that sudden wealth syndrome isn’t limited to athletes, few groups are affected by it more acutely or more visibly.
An ounce of prevention
When it comes to sudden wealth, athletes are in a unique position for two reasons.
First, unlike an inheritance or windfall, this wealth is something an athlete has been working toward, likely for years. Psychologically, this can mean that a sense of ownership and responsibility is butting up against the feeling of invincibility and permanence that can come with a transformational amount of money.
Second, the wealth isn’t a totally isolated event. In the case of pros, this is a salary – one on a grand scale, but still one requiring a consistent output of skill and effort. Contracts pay out for multiple years and can be extended, traded or subdivided, but the core reality is that the earning window is abbreviated. And that window can be shortened further by injury or underperformance, putting athletes closer to lottery winners than CEOs.
The first step toward managing these factors and the myriad impacts of sudden wealth overall, Lauren believes, is education.
“Learning is a great place to focus early on,” she says. “There can be this sense that everything is happening so fast that you have to make decisions and life plans just as quickly. But when you slow things down and start with the basics, you lay a really important foundation of financial literacy.”
Another reason education is critical is that the wealth conversation is happening sooner than ever. Name, image and likeness (NIL) deals have meant that athletes need to manage their brands and bottom lines as early as high school.
A deep bench
Because athletes are operating on an inverted career timeline from most other professionals, with peak earning in the earliest years and retirement often not long after, assembling a team of advisors is another step in the wealth process that will need to happen early.
By the time a blockbuster contract is part of the conversation, relationships with an agent and legal representatives are already in the mix, if not long-established. To help ensure that a contract is maximized and planning encompasses a lifetime and not simply a lifestyle, it’s important for athletes to round out their teams with financial advisors, accountants, personal attorneys, business and personal advisors, and more depending on their goals.
As part of the vetting process for these professionals, Lauren encourages looking for people who:
- Lead with education
- Act with transparency
- Are eager to collaborate with other advisors
- Look to build frameworks (financial or otherwise) that will help govern how decisions are made
The game plan
In October 2025, a National Endowment for Financial Education survey found that 70% of respondents believed their financial lives would be better if they’d received financial education in school. This is one in a larger set of national statistics on financial literacy that influence Lauren’s approach to planning for athletes. Most of her conversations with pros and their advisors, she says, begin with a budget.
“It starts with cash flow and liquidity planning: How can we save and create some reserves, how can we develop a discipline around spending.”
With that baseline established, the strategy then expands to include things like:
- Investments, with a balance of both wealth-building and preservation strategies
- Insurance, ensuring that the unique liabilities athletes, like other high-profile individuals, are exposed to are covered
- Taxes, considering the unique factors at play when athletes might be earning and residing across multiple jurisdictions
- Philanthropy, exploring the tools available to maximize impact while prioritizing privacy
And however early they may be happening, these conversations should be forecasting the long future ahead. Prenuptial agreements can be discussed before there’s ever a relationship. Estate plans outlined before a single gray hair appears.
Looking ahead is not just critical for sustaining financial stability; it’s essential for personal well-being, too. The best advisors will help athletes consider who they are beyond their sport, alongside helping them manage its rewards.
According to Lauren, “The goal is to help people build a discipline around this wealth, so they can become good stewards of it, but also around their futures, so they can create something that lasts.”
There is no assurance that any investment strategy will be successful, and an investment could lose money. Raymond James does not provide tax or legal advice. Please discuss these matters with the appropriate professional. Insurance products offered through Raymond James Insurance Group, an affiliate of Raymond James & Associates, Inc., and Raymond James Financial Services, Inc.
