Ex-NFL Player Gives Common Sense Personal Finance Advice That Most People Just Don’t Understand

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John Urschel is one fascinating guy. The former Baltimore Ravens lineman does math for fun and publishes his findings. He also had the balls, and brains, to walk away from the sport he loves at the age of 26.

In three seasons with the Ravens, Urschel earned over $1.8 million, but people thought the Canadian-born mathematician was making league minimum based on the way he lived his life. To call Urschel frugal would be a good word but the guy has a brilliant but simple way for everyone, even those earning $30K, to not go broke.

He preaches a simple concept — just because you make X amount of dollars a year, that doesn’t mean you need to spend it all. Hell, you don’t have to spend any of it. You just need to learn basic math.

In 2016, Urschel made around $600,000. He lived on less than $25,000 a year. That was only 4% of his salary. Now, it’s easy to say “well he already made a ton so 4% of his salary comes out to a regular salary.” I can’t argue that point BUT the key to Urschel’s success involves his life choices. Urschel doesn’t consider himself cheap. He just understands that the things he loves in life are pretty cheap.

“The things I love the most in this world (reading math, doing research, playing chess) are very, very inexpensive,” he explained in an interview after retiring.

Urschel realized early on (because he’s basically a genius) that expensive stuff didn’t make him happy. He wants people to find the stuff that makes them happy and concentrate on that instead of on material possessions. So spending a ton of money on car payments or an apartment with an extra bedroom that no one sleeps in, save the money and find activities that bring joy and don’t cost three paychecks.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that’s the right thing to do.

Check out our interview with John Urschel here.

[via Yahoo! Finance]