Amazing stat I heard today

[Spider-Dan]

I'm not sure I agree with that analysis. Seems like you are using the 90% of athletes that screw up millions of dollars of instant income to be indicative of the entire group. I'm sure there are number of instant millionaires that aren't athletes that also go broke, but I don't think it's anywhere close to 90%.

I've seen sources claiming that 70% of lottery winners squander their winnings within a few years.  Of course, there are many factors to consider, but it's out there.

On top of that if you include the guys that just become extremely wealthy fairly quickly like the Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerburgs of the world, that number drops even lower.

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg are not "instant millionaires" in any useful sense of the term.  Those are people who built and grew a business, advancing through many stages of increasing wealth in the process; contrast this to a lottery winner who goes from food stamps to multimillions with one check, or an NFL draftee who goes from broke college student to ultra-wealthy by signing his first contract.

I think there is something to the fact that these guys are not just getting rich, but that they are also quite young, immature and feel very entitled typically because they are athletes and have always been treated "special" because of their ability to play a game.

I think it has less to do with entitlement and more to do with a simple lack of financial savviness.  I certainly don't think lottery winners feel "entitled" (other than the entitlement created by winning millions of dollars), and they still go bust.

[Pappy13]

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg are not "instant millionaires" in any useful sense of the term.  Those are people who built and grew a business, advancing through many stages of increasing wealth in the process

But don't you start to see a pattern emerge? It's not just the fact that people are handed a check with a lot of zero's on it, its the fact that the person isn't prepared to handle the money in a financially reasonable way because they are literally not very responsible people. Hand that same money to someone who's had to build a business and they seem to be able to handle it a lot better BECAUSE it's not the same type of person. A guy mature enough to build his own business is a lot better prepared to handle someone handing him a check with lots of zeroes then athletes and someone living off foodstamps. At least I think you can make that argument.

[Spider-Dan]

I don't subscribe to the idea that "maturity" is synonymous with "financial expertise."  The ability to manage large sums of liquid wealth (while avoiding scammers, leechers, and bad investments) is not a skillset that many non-rich people would ever have an opportunity to develop.

Rather than categorizing those businessmen as more mature, I would say that gradually escalating wealth gives one more of an opportunity to learn the ropes; you can make mistakes with a 200k/year income that are fairly easy to recover from at a 1m/year income.