Sports & Entertainment Professionals

One of the first steps is understanding what your take-home pay is and what you are spending. Knowing this will help you put a personalized financial plan in place. As an athlete or entertainer, you face unique financial opportunities and challenges, so your plan should ideally:

• Identify how you want to spend your money
• Establish both a bank account to manage day-to-day expenses and an investment account to save for the future
• Address large and/or inconsistent income streams
• Look to minimize taxes
• Plan for a fulfilling retirement
• Allow for giving back and creating a legacy

Contact a Merrill Sports & Entertainment Advisor today to begin a conversation to get started.

As an athlete or entertainer, you worked hard to get where you are. With this success, you may be approached about unique business and investment opportunities from friends, relatives, friends of friends or even strangers. While some investment ideas may be successful, many could be failures. A financial professional can help you review the opportunities that are presented to you, evaluate the market trends and discuss how the opportunity fits into your short-term and long-term financial goals.

Being an “in-demand” star can result in lucrative contracts. Yet, there can be a big difference between what the organization offers in the contract and what ends up in your paycheck. For any paycheck you receive, there are deductions. For example, the government requires that certain payments (such as Federal and state taxes, Social Security and Medicare payments) are withheld from your pay. Then there are other deductions that reflect choices that you make, including contributions to retirement plans, health insurance, and life insurance. After money is withheld for these items, your final pay is less than the original signed contract. After all the deductions are taken out, this is called your net pay. Working with a Merrill Sports and Entertainment Advisor can help you plan for these deductions while also helping you with your future financial goals.

As an athlete or entertainer, you face unique working conditions that can include significant time away from your job due to injury (most often in professional sports) or due to a union strike (most likely for entertainers). There’s also the uncertainty about how a career not lasting as long as you wish. These “interruptions” could create a financial shortfall that throws carefully laid-out plans off track. While you can’t prevent these scenarios from happening, you can be prepared for life’s “what if’s” to help you weather the tough times. A Merrill Sports and Entertainment Advisor can help you develop a plan to keep your long-term financial goals on track while also having a strategy for those “just in case” moments.

Managing your wealth does not have to be your second (or third) full-time job. You should, however, devote enough time and attention to your finances (i.e., assets, liabilities and investments) to ensure you can make informed and reasonable decisions. Scheduling regular meetings with your advisors is a good place to start. Just as individual team members have different skill sets that make the team stronger, your advisors should include members that have expertise with financial management, tax strategies, business dealings and estate planning – to name a few. These team members can work with you to establish short- and long-term goals, creating benchmarks against which you can measure your ongoing performance. Checking in with those advisors on a regular basis will help you stay fully aware of progress to your goals — and make adjustments to correct anything as needed. Everyone will have specific goals that mean the most for them, and certain goals will change over time. Working with a Merrill Sports and Entertainment Advisor can help you plan for both the short term and long term, and make adjustments as new life events (i.e., marriage, kids) occur.

Athletes and entertainers can face pressure to share their good fortune with friends and relatives. While being successful can bring amazing opportunities, it can also be a source of contention when long-time friends and family members feel “owed” for having contributed to your success. Establishing clear boundaries for all financial matters is an important step to help avoid negative impacts on personal relationships. Involving your professional financial advisor with those money requests can be a sound strategy to handle matters diplomatically. Talk to a Merrill Sports and Entertainment Advisor to learn more about strategies to manage your financial situation.

Being a professional athlete and/or entertainer comes with a set of unique tax considerations. Having the right tax attorney will help you manage your tax situation. You also can implement a number of tax-smart strategies through your financial advisor. For example, you can:

• ­Explore tax-efficient philanthropy
• ­­Develop an estate plan
• ­­Consider organizing as an employer
• ­Get organized and file your tax returns / make tax payments on time to avoid penalties and interest
• ­­Understand the implications of the “jock tax”
• ­­Clearly establish your domicile
• ­­Understanding the tax ramifications of different sources of income (i.e., endorsements, appearance fees, etc.).

Talk to a Merrill Sports and Entertainment Advisor to learn more about strategies to manage your financial situation