Winning With Money as a Student-Athlete

It's not as complex as most people make it seem. Trust me, you can do this.

I teach athletes around the country three simple steps to start winning with money. Winning has nothing to do with making more money and everything to do with how well you control the money you already have. I'd love for you to make more money, but that isn't the point of this article.

1. Check Your Stats

You gotta know three things:

I'm sure you know tons of stats about yourself and athletes you look up to. Knowing stats gives you a solid place to start. These three financial stats, Income, Expenses, and Debt, are crucial to winning with money. There's a lot more to know, but when we're diving into our finances for the first time, this is a perfect place to start.

Now that you know your stats, you can move on to actually creating your plan.

2. Create Your Plan

You should create a plan for your money every semester and every month. You'll likely have some income and expenses that occur every month and others that happen every semester, so it's your job to be prepared for both.

There's only three things you can do with your money:

2. Spend

3. Give

And it's your job to decide how much of each you want to do. Most people spend 100% of what they make then complain that they have no money. No, you had money, then you spent all of it.

How do you decide how much to save, spend, and give?

Start with your minimum expenses.

That might look like:

Bare bones. Not much. No fun money. The absolute minimum that you could spend and still survive. Once you've done this, you should know how much you're making, how much you must spend, then you get to decide what to do with what's leftover (save, spend, give). I call your leftover "excess."

Your excess could be used like this:

Here's the great part: You get to decide. No one else.

Last thing on creating your plan. This is YOUR plan. It's gonna be different than your bestie's plan. Different than your boyfriend's plan. Different than your parent's plan when they were in college. Your plan will even be different than past or future you. In college you should have a new plan every semester, and sometimes every month.

Now you're almost on your way to winning with money, but here's the most important part:

3. Commit to Your Plan

Creating a plan isn't the hard part. Tons of people are broke even though they have a great financial plan.

Winning is the result of execution. Not ideas.

If you don't follow the game plan, you will lose. No one wins on accident. At least not for a long period of time.

Once you've created your plan, committing to it and tracking it every month is the key to winning. You need a tool to track your income and expenses every month to ensure that you're staying on track with the plan you created for yourself.

We made the perfect tool for you.

The Locker Room Finance App is everything you need to Check Your Stats, Create Your Plan, and Commit to Your Plan. Download the LRF App to get started today.

Go Win

Don't be like most people. Most people wait to create a plan. Most people are scared to start. But most people also are broke. And most people are in debt up to their eyeballs. So don't wait.

You'll learn more along the way, but you know everything you need to start.

Thanks for reading.

Conner