It’s not always a ‘sexy thing’ to be a millionaire: Brandon Copeland

Brandon Copeland is a former NFL linebacker turned coach. But the type of coaching he gravitates toward is not in sports, but in personal finance.

The 33-year-old — who played for six teams in 10 seasons in the National Football League before retiring last year — began teaching a financial literacy course to students at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, alma mater in 2019 while playing for the New York Jets.

The course, dubbed “Life 101,” was inspired by his own experiences with money, according to “Professor Cope,” who is also a member of the CNBC Global Financial Wellness Advisory Board and co-founder of Athletes.org, the players’ organization. association for college athletes.

Now, the Orlando resident has written a new book, “Your Money Playbook,” that reads like a football coach’s blueprint for winning the financial “game.” It touches on topics like budgeting, paying off debt, saving, estate planning, and starting a side hustle. (Just don’t call it a “side hustle,” as he explains in the book.)

CNBC caught up with Copeland by phone to discuss his financial literacy journey, why becoming a millionaire is “not a sexy thing,” and how it helps to think in terms of Chipotle burritos.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Greg Iacurci: What led you to teach personal finance and financial literacy?

Brandon Copeland: You feel unprepared for some of life’s major financial decisions. We go to school all these years and (learn) about the tangent of a 45-degree angle, but we don’t talk about appliances and how to buy them or how to make sure you’re protecting yourself when you rent. your first apartment and what is renters insurance.

I always thought it was crazy that I had to get to the Baltimore Ravens to learn what a 401(k) was. It was 2013, my debut year. We learned what a 401(k) was when the NFL Players Association came and told us about the benefits you get if you contribute.

Fast forward to December 2016: My wife and I bought our first home in New Jersey. When I bought the house, I was in Detroit playing for the Lions. My wife was at the closing table and she called me and (asked), “Hey, does everything look good on this?” They emailed me the closing documents; it was 100 pages long and I had no idea what I was looking at. I could see that the purchase price was the price I agreed to, but then I saw all the other titles and liens and this and that. And I’m like, “I have no idea if they’re confusing me right now.” One of my biggest fears about being an NFL player has always been someone taking advantage of me.

GI: What do you think is the most important takeaway from your book?

BC: The power of growth. This was the big breakthrough for me when I started making money. I had no idea it existed when I was a kid. I always tell people, either you put your money to work for you, or you work the rest of your life for money.

There are a lot of people who are afraid of the stock market. And I’m like, well, everybody’s an investor. If you have a dollar to your name, you are an investor. If you take your money, put it under the mattress, do nothing with it, put it in a safe at home: that’s an investment decision. That’s a 0% return. If you take your money, you put it in a regular checking account, that’s a 0.01% return. You put it in a high-yield savings account, it’s a 4% to 5% return. The stock market, you put it in an index fund S&P 500this can be an average return of 9% to 10%.

These are all investment decisions, you just have to choose wisely. (People) can put their money to work for them and get out of the “rat race” at some point.

GI: For someone who is just starting out – let’s say hesitant to invest their money in the market – how would you suggest they start?

BC: I think the first thing you need to do is download the (financial news) apps — the CNBCs of the world, MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg — and turn on notifications. Those notifications begin to explain to you what the market is moving and why, and you begin to learn the language of money. Whether you choose to invest money or not, at least you start to feel comfortable with, “Oh, the market is down today. Well, why?” I think it’s important to start developing your stomach.

The other thing is, you start seeing where your (your) money is: what account your money is in and how much is in those accounts. By doing this, you begin to look at your money from a 30,000-foot perspective. You can start to determine, “I have X amount of dollars here in my traditional checking account. Maybe I can take some of that money and put it in a high yield savings account that is now giving me 4% interest on it. per year and if we get 4% interest per year, maybe that gives me $500 a year that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Now you start getting into the money game. What is the limited amount of effort I can put in and still generate money on my behalf?

As a kid, if someone said, “Hey man, I’m giving you $500 to do nothing, push two buttons,” you’d be like, “Sign me up!” I always break it down because it’s a lot of Chipotle burritos, a lot of dinner, that’s a lot of time with my family at the water park. By doing this, it becomes a priority for me to hurry up and make that investment decision.

GI: One of the first things you encourage people to do in the book is say out loud to themselves, “I can be rich.” Why?

BC: In football, your money or your job can be taken away overnight or through injury. A lot of times, as I was making money, I was always looking around the corner. Even today, I think of it as if someone could pull the rug out from under my feet. So I’m still in survival mode sometimes. I think even though you can make money, there are still ways that you can have anxiety about money, your lifestyle, and when you spend money—all of those things.

Start having positive affirmations — “I deserve to be rich. I deserve to have money. I deserve not to be stressed about keeping the lights on. I can be rich. I can do this’ — sometimes you have to train yourself. on this. Because where else do you go to get that positive affirmation that you can do it?

Doing these things over time not only reinforces positive connotations about yourself, but also has a real effect on your mental well-being. It’s really, really hard to get out of the house and be a super productive human being in society when you don’t know if the doors will be locked or changed the next time you get there.

GI: You write in the book that the journey of financial empowerment will require people to confront their “inner money myths.”” What is the most common money myth you hear?

BC: For many communities they serve, put your money in the bank.

GI: You mean keep it in cash and don’t invest it?

BC: Exact. I think it’s a myth because you put your money in the bank and the bank goes out and invests your money: they invest it in other people’s projects, in other people’s houses, and then they get a rate of return on your money. Not to say banks are bad and saving is bad, (but) you have to figure out at some point when can I get to the point where I can put my money to work for me?

I think some of the myths are about whether wealth is for you or not. A lot of millionaires, it’s not a sexy thing. You often feel like you have to go and create the next Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok to ever be rich, when really you just need to make simple, consistent, and disciplined decisions. This is the hardest thing in the world, to have delayed gratification or to submit to delayed gratification.

I think a lot of times, we don’t prepare for the situation we will be in one day or could be in one day.

GI: How do you balance today versus tomorrow?

BC: I went to a school a few weeks ago and (asked) the athletes there to write down what they want their lives to look like five years after graduation. Doing that and saying, “Hey, I want this with my life. I want it to look like this and I want the holidays to be like this,” now you can always look at what you are actually doing and determine if your current actions are (working toward) your future, the future things you want for yourself.

I think many of us never take the time to write down what we really want or visualize what we really want out of life. So you end up going to school, you go to college, and you’re there just to get a good job and make money, but you don’t really imagine what that job is and what you like to do versus what you don’t like to do You end up just being a pinball in life.

I literally put people in my life to help hold me accountable. The best way I’d say to balance delayed gratification and being happy with where you are today is to have those accountability friends who tell you straight up, “Hey, you’re losing weight” or “Hey, you’re doing a good job . .” But you can also relate your own goals and desires to yourself and (ask), do my actions really add up to this?

GI: You write in the book that having high-interest debt, like credit card debt, and investing at the same time is like turning up the heat in winter in Green Bay, Wisconsin, while keeping the windows wide open opened. can you explain

BC: Sometimes people put money into the market to try to get 6%, 9%, 10%, 12%, whatever, when they could be making the minimum payment on their credit card or no payment, which would be even worse, and pay 18% (as interest).

You automatically lock yourself into a lose-lose scenario for yourself that you won’t be able to overcome.