Former professional basketball star Dwyane Wade made millions of dollars playing for the Miami Heat for 16 years. But in a recent interview with Men’s Health magazine, he credits his financial advisor, who he doesn’t name, for helping him get to a good place financially in his post-NBA career.
Wade recently told the magazine that he used to have a gambling problem, losing a lot of money playing cards with his teammates on airplane rides. His advisor intervened, asking Wade if this was a problem they needed to discuss.
The best financial advice Wade ever got was to get rid of about 16 cars that he was holding on to. That advice also came from his unnamed advisor, who told him to start by getting rid of his Maybach, which he didn’t drive but was costing him $6,000 a month. Now, the former ballplayer has one car—an Audi Q8.
“The secret to financial wellness is to have a plan,” Wade says.
He sits down with an advisor on a quarterly basis to discuss his financial goals. His main goal? To have the same lifestyle he had when he was playing in the NBA.
“What do I have to do to maintain this level of lifestyle?” Wade says. “We had to sit down and come up with a plan, and that plan allows me to understand, ‘OK, I got a budget. I can’t spend over this. Or if I go over, OK, I got to make money somewhere else. I got to hustle.’”
