Mark Brunell is all out of money

Or he and 20,000 others can work as seat fillers on game day.

 

Yeah but he'd have to live in Jacksonville.

 

Just for the next year or two.

 

I think I'll call in and ask Brunell about all the empty seats at Jaguars games. Then wait for hondo to call in screaming and crying.

 

Nope, that was someone else. Never said that (referring to your second question).

I MIGHT have said that it isn't worth it financially to take a lower-paying job than unemployment, although I don't recall at this point. But that takes into account the actual paying of bills.

 

Doesn't every year he plays further vest him in his pension as well? Or is there a cap for how much you can get once you play a certain amount of years?

 

Oh yes I do. I probably wouldn't have when I was 23, but I would now.

 

Wrong. I know how I'd react. Setting a budget and sticking by it is a pasttime for me. Figuring out how to live off the interest of $1 million without working would be like a fun game I'd get to play.

But people who get giant lumps of money aren't me.

People who are smart with money don't usually play the lottery, enter raffles or gamble a great deal — so they rarely if ever fall into giant wads of unearned cash.

The only exception is inheritance.

 

Living off just the interest on $1 million would be pretty tough. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it's tough.

Presumably you'd want something risk-free or close to it, and in today's environment you are looking at maybe 3% ROI. So $30k/year, most of us do or could live off that.

But each year that $30k becomes less and less due to inflation. You'd have to start eating into the principle fairly quickly, so at that point it's just a race between your money running out and your death.

 

I wasn't aware Brunell was the first professional sports athlete in any city to get into financial trouble. Thank you for setting the record straight.

 

I have a friend who is doing it. I don't know what setup he has, but he has $1.5 million in the bank or in some fund where it is 100 percent protected. He gets between 6-7 percent interest, payback or whatever on it and lives very comfortably. Admittedly, I don't know all the details, but I grilled him about what level the money is protected and he assure me it's 100 percent. I don't know if he was being truthful, but he has no reason to lie to me. I was best man in his wedding and I'm the Godfather to his son, so I'd be stunned if he would lie about something like that, but you never know...

Three percent seems very, very low. He's had it setup since he turned 35 and got the bulk of his trust fund, so he's had this in place for almost three years. He said he gets between $90K and $100K a year.

 

Yeah, Rick was way off on that comment. Brunell was stupid. Sorry if that bothers you, Rick, but it's the truth.

No way in hell would I have ended up broke after bringing in that kind of money. None.