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Professional athletes have to grapple with plenty of issues that the average person will never have to worry about encountering, and that certainly includes Serena Williams based on a story about the time she tried to deposit a $1 million check in the drive-thru at a bank.
There’s only so much you can do to prepare for the life that comes with being thrust into the spotlight as a teenager en route to becoming one of the most dominant tennis players of all time, which is the situation Serena Williams found herself in when she and her sister Venus took the sport by storm around the turn of the millennium.
Anyone who’s familiar with their background knows the Williams Sisters essentially ate, slept, and breathed tennis when they were growing up, and while they were obviously equipped to face the challenges that greeted them on the court, Serena recently admitted there was a bit of a learning curve when it comes to reaping the spoils of her illustrious reign.
Williams shed some light on that reality while discussing the beginning of her career on Hot Ones, as she admitted she “never played for money” and subsequently needed her “tax guy” to remind her it would be a good idea to collect her winnings after she repeatedly forgot to do so following a tournament.
She also recalled the time she did remember to secure a check worth around $1 million but ran into a slight issue when she decided to put it in her account, saying:
“I got my check. It was like a million dollars; OK, I’m gonna go deposit it…
I just went to the drive-thru. The guy was like, ‘Uh, I think you need to come inside for this.”‘
That’s not a huge surprise when you consider most banks are going to go out of their way to treat anyone who brings them a seven-figure deposit like a VIP (it’s also theoretically a bad idea to keep that much money in a single account when you consider the FDIC insurance caps at $250,000).
I can only assume the woman who earned close to $100 million in prize money alone eventually linked up with an accountant who was able to give her a bit more guidance.