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When you look at the guys who are making the, you know, my yearly and one check.You start to look at some of the things they do and it’s like, OK, that’s why, and I think that’s the mistake that most guys make is that they want to do the same things that those guys are doing without that type of money.

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Welcome to Financial Freestyle here on Yahoo Finance, and I’m your host, Ross Mack. Now look guys, no matter where you are in your own journey of attaining true wealth, you can never stop learning. And that’s why every week I’m talking to some of the goats, some of the greatest ever do it, and this week is no different, because I’m talking to my dog, an actual Super Bowl winning champion, my dog Cariblasting gang. Carrie, what’s up baby? How you doing?

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Man, I’m good, man. I’m good. I appreciate you for opening up your platform, let me come on and kick it with your dog.

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Man, you already know it’s nothing but love and uh and I, and to the people, right, I want y’all to know something. When it comes to athletes, right, you have a few people that stick stick out for different reasons, right? Uh, when it came to Kari, you stuck out because you were really brilliant when it came to finances, when it

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came

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to investing, right? Like, so before we even get into all that, I just want you to tell the people, right, who is Cariblasting again.

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Man, Corey Blast game is du kid from Huntsville, Alabama. You know, I grew up playing sports there, um, you know, played everything, baseball, football, basketball, track and field, went to Vanderbilt, thought I was gonna be a doctor. I was pre-med for a little bit, uh, then went to business administration route of healthcare, um.Went to the league undrafted from Vanderbilt, played for 6 years, and uh throughout that journey, man, uh.Just, just found an interest and a love for personal finance, uh, the markets, real estate, just everything, business, man, so, so throughout, throughout that, like I said, I found that love, found that interest, and I’ve just been trying to put my thoughts out and help as many people as I could, you know, just, you know, in any way that I can. So it’s a little bit about myself, uh, we can get a little bit deeper in the, you know, whatever you want to get, get deeper into.

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No, so I, I love that you bring up Vandy, right? I, I got a little love for Tennessee. Um, what would have been like had you have had access to NILs when you was at Vandy?

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Man, I’m sick about it to this day, man, cause like you hear some of the numbers, man, and, and, and every time I hear the number.Crazier, man. Like, you see the, the, the softball, uh, phenom who transferred from uh Stanford to Texas Tech just got an M, but I mean when you look at the revenue generator sports football, a couple of kids on the team getting an M+, right? I mean, which is, you know, which is.Warranted because they’re, you know, revenue generator sports. Like you got, you got guys that might never, might never play that are getting a baseline of, you know, 40 $50 60,000 dollars a year. Now, you’re telling me I would have had 60 racks a year in school just toJust to, you know, just to have, I, I think, I think the outcomes would have been a lot different. There’s a couple of things that I think about too though, man, like, I’m very thankful that I had two great parents who uh who really instilled in me hard work, saving money, my pops, he put me on a Kiplinger magazine when I was in.Had to be high school cause like I told him I was like, look, I wanna go to college. I wanna go to the NFL. He was like, I bet. So if, if you’re gonna go to the NFL if you’re gonna do this, you need to know how to manage your money because you would always say if you can’t manage your own money, you don’t deserve to have it. And so that’s how I got, that’s how I kind of got put on your dog, uh, uh, and, and somebody I consider a big on me a friend now of Brandon Copeland cause he used to write for uh Kidlinger, uh.He had a couple of articles in Kills. I think that might have been when I was in college. He was already in the league at this time though. Uh, and so I think that my experience with NIL would have been a little bit different, uh, than what I’m seeing because I had my dad there to, to tell me like, hey, you probably need to do this. Like when I, when I got a little bit of graduation money to go into college, he put me with who he was with as his financial advisor. And then, I mean, it wasn’t nothing but maybe.$750 to $1000 you know what I’m saying? Put it in a little mutual fund, but that gets you interested, that gets you to start learning, uh, but it, it would have been a lot more tomfoolery going on, man. You know, I, I think my first cost of living check, I blew the whole cost of living check on like online shopping with all about and then I got the fist, I put them on and it was cool for about a semester, you know, you get compliments, you, you know, you jumping clean, but then the next semester I realized like damn.I gotta do this again, you know, and I’m only getting $1500 a semester. Oh, but it definitely would have been a lot different, man, and so, yeah, man, but it’s, it’s an interesting layout of uh.Everything that’s going on in NIL, man, because these kids are getting this money, and I can’t remember if they’re getting it as 1099 or whatever, but they’re getting it. No taxes are coming out. They got agents, the agents are taking some of the agents are taking exorbitant fees higher than the standard 3%,you know,

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they take 10%, 5 out of 10.And to your point, so yeah, they’re doing 1099s, but even crazier, right, like you were saying that some guys who would never see the league are making 50 $60,000. And if you really like take a step back, like these guys and they’re 4 or 5 or you know, the goal is to just keep, I will stay in colleges in red shirt as long as I can and still keep getting these checks, especially if knowing that I’m making more than the average income. Right? So to your point, say you’re on a football team.And you’re getting, you know, $60,000. But when you graduate, you might go into sales or something, you’re not making that. And so like, you know, one of the things we’re doing on with my Macronomics platform is we have, you know, we’re doing a lot of NIL curriculum and we’re going to talk to different programs. But like when you sit around, not only are some of these kids making more money than their parents, some of these kids are making more money in the current.and they’ll probably make within the next 10 years based on not going to the pros. And so to your point, it’s like, man, these kids, not only, you know, are they forced with potentially having to give money back to their parents and stuff, but on top of that, it’s like, man.I’m trying to buy a track hawk. I’m trying to buy this and buy that, so I can only imagine. But the fact that you say you were more financially savvy due to the Kippingers and stuff, that’s legit. But a lot of kids are blowing it right now and so it’s interesting to kinda, kinda see where they at and, and like, which was, and then we’re gonna obviously segue to the pros because the next thing is like, you know, we, I just saw the draft and obviously I’m a Chicago guy and so I, I actuallyI, you know, I got a partnership with McDonald’s, so I know all the McDonald and all Americans. So literally VJ, A, Ace Bailey, and also Dylan Harper and obviously um Cooper, Cooper Flag, but the the funniest thing was Dilan Harper, his first rookie deal.He’s, he’s making more money than his dad Ron Harper, who was a Chicago Bulls legend, more money than he made in his entirety of his NBA career. His first rookie deal, his son Dylan Harper. Now obviously his parents, you want your kids to do better, but I asked the question, right, that you said, right, you were undrafted when you went into the NFL.How do you think your mindset shifted when it came to managing your finances relative to if you would have been a 1st or 2nd round pick where that money is guaranteed?

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Yeah, it would have definitely been different. So as an undrafted free agent, my first check was $10,000. That was my side of bonus. They took, uh, what did they take? I know I ended up with 640, after they took taxes out of, I ended up with $6410 man. And so at the time I was in, I was in grad school and my mindset was.My mindset was make the team. I know I’m gonna make the team. I’m, I’m gonna go ahead and do my thing, whoopty woo. But I wanted to get as much money as I could in the door and I wanted to live as if I made $80,000 pre-tax. I, I was looking at like consultant salaries and like different sales salaries that I heard and, and I was like, OK, I’m gonna live as if I’m making this. So if I don’t play a year after this.I still have a couple of years of reserves, right? I think if I was a first rounder, it would have been different. It would have been, it would have been completely different because then you check off some of those boxes pretty quickly. Like you don’t need to have 34 years in reserves, right? Uh, so, so it definitely would have been different, but I was always just trying to check the boxes, right? I wanted to make sure I had enough breathing room between.The time that I ended playing, which I didn’t know what it was, so that caused me a little bit of anxiety in between when I found my next gig, and I didn’t want there to be a big drop off mentally because you know that that can like cause a whole lot of, you know, a whole lot of angst and a whole lot of mental, I guess perturbation or whatever word you use for that. But like that could cause you to have some problems.I want to have a lifestyle that’s like, you know what, whether I play here for another year, for the 2 years or 3 years, I’m gonna have this lifestyle as if I’m making $80,000 pre-tax, and this is what I’m gonna live off of.

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I want to put some numbers around it because, right, obviously.You just won a Super Bowl.With the Eagles, but before that you were with the Bears. And he was obviously in that room when we were on hard knocks and you had Caleb, our quarterback Caleb Williams.Uh, my sign of bonus was 25 billion. Your signed bonus was 10,000, right? And so when you even think about like that delta, like how crazy of a difference that is, but the fact that you’re saying that no matter how much money you were making, it like, because you’re basing this on making the team, you were only gonna live off 80,000. What was, like, what, what was that actual, say you made the team for the full year, what would that salary have been?That year,

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thatsalary would have been $465,000 that first year. That was the that was the rookie minimum that.

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So you, you, you would be living off roughly, call it, we’ll just round it to 400, so we call it 20%. And so obviously, when you make more money, you’re still keeping that same mindset. And so I love how you, how you kind of said it is like, look, no matter what it is, I’m living off this so that in the event, I don’t make the team. In the event I do get cut.The idea is like I’m gonna have some reserves that way I don’t have to, you know, I don’t have so much anxiety when it comes to me entering the workforce. So let’s talk about that because obviously you in the, you’re in the locker room with some of the greats, right? You don’t played with Derrick Henry’s and you know, you didn’t play with a lot of the greats, but people making a bags, some areNonetheless, all of y’all are making a bag, but it’s it’s just relative. But the fact that you are there’s

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some that make my year.

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You’re seeing people make your yearly salary in one check.

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Yeah, I, when I was in Minnesota, it was a safety and his, his one game check cause I, I made the practice squad. His one game check would have been more than I made the whole year, which is, you know, that’s how, that’s how it goes. You’re all pro, you, you know, you’re doing your thing, but I mean, yeah, that’s how, that’s how it was going.

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I love it, man. So, so my question really is like, you know, when you look at, you know, the average NFL life span is 3 years, the 80% of NFL players end up going broke within 5 years of leaving the NFL. Like the, the statistics are staggering. Do you think the fact thatYou know, you were going in, you pre-made, you already got a different mindset. Your dad had you, you know, thinking about finances early. But do you think the, the idea of you not having a guaranteed income made youStart wanting to manage your money even better than a person who might have had guaranteed money.

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Absolutely, absolutely, man, becauseYou know,I’m not, I’m not gonna say that I just had blinders on my whole, you know, whatever, and I never looked to the left and the right cause at, at, at times you compare yourself to your peers, right? But I was also comparing myself to people outside of the game, right? And so I was like, you know what, if they, if they live in this quality of life off of that salary, I can’t, I could do that. Like I, I don’t need, like when you look at the guys who are making the, you know, my yearly and one check.You start to look at some of the things they do and it’s like, OK, that’s why. And I think that’s the mistake that most guys make is that they want to do the same things that those guys are doing without that type of money, right? And so,You know, it’s, it’s, it’s, yeah, the uncertainty made me do that, but made me like wanna be more into it, but I already just had a baseline of like for the most part, not keeping up with the Joneses, you know what I’m saying, like, I didn’t have like a, a need to do that, you know, that wasn’t necessarily my personality.And so I think just already having that baseline, it just kinda allowed me to be like, all right, I got this, I got this extra money above like these goals that I set for this year. What do I wanna do with it? And then that caused me to like, all right, let’s go learn something. Like I had a financial advisor, uh, was looking at some of the stuff that he was doing. I was like, you know what, I just learned a little bit more, don’t necessarily wanna do what he’s doing and I, you know, took off on my own andIt happened, it just happened to work out cause you know, I, I, I got in at 19, we had to drop in 20 and so it’s pretty advantageous, you know, 5 years from 2020 to 2025 and so it’s done well.

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I love it. Look guys, we’re gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we’re gonna have more from the Super Bowl champ Kyrie blasting game.Hi guys, welcome back to Financial Freestyle here on Yahoo Finance, and I’m your host, Ross Mack. That’s not every day we get a Super Bowl champ, right? When we think about professional athletes, y’all spending a lot of money, man. And so, over your career, what has been your worst purchase?And then we gonna give you some some time to actually salvage that and then tell us what is your, what has been your best investment. Worst purchase, best investment.

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Worst purchaseWill either be, it had to be a car, you know, one of the cars I bought back in uh 21, uh ended up getting a, a car. We, we got rid of it since then, but uh ended up buying a little, little, little sports car, little, little Porsche, man. It was, it was cool. We, I mean, we got to use, it’s cool, you know what I’m saying? Still did it the smart way. This man, like it was cool, it’s fun to drive, but the maintenance on that thing was crazy. So I, I, I would not do that again unless, you know, I’m ready to do the maintenance and.And you know,Really pay for that one.Uh, best investment.Just in terms of the sheer appreciation would be crypto, but I think the best thing, so I would say, I would say it would be my crypto, it would be Bitcoin, uh, just in terms of the sheer appreciation of asset. But, you know,Yeah, I would say crypto. I, I mean, cause I, I like, I like real estate in terms of the income that you get and then, you know, being able to say, hey, I’m running the business, go through that process and stay sharp on that. But best investment numerically has been Bitcoin.

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So,clearly, you know, well, one, when did you buy Bitcoin? So let’s answer that real quick. When, when you, when did you first buy

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Bitcoin?First bought it 2016.First bought Bitcoin in 2016. 1 of my teammates, one of my, and I mean it wasn’t much. I ain’t have much money to put into it, but one of my teammates was on it heavy. And so I bought a little bit, let it sit and they ran up, made like 500 bucks off of it and sold it like a dummy. But when I got back, yeah, just crazy. But when I got back into the league, I started back buying, uh, periodically with a little bit of do cost averaging and uh.Just kind of held on, ran up to 68, didn’t do anything, fell back down, bought some more, and so it’s been a, it’s been a good place so far. It’s been a good place so far.

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So then this should really be right up your alley. So you see that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae will now start allowing in the like the mortgage loan process, they’ll start now allowing your crypto to be part of your kind of your your cash reserves. Will you now, I don’t know if you’ve been able to leverage it at all, but do you think moving forward you’ll be able toYou know, actually leverage that and say, oh, here’s my crypto. Let me now get this new investment property based on this or anything like that.

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Man, you know, a lot of that stuff, the devils in the details, right? So it was saying like it’s gonna, it has to be on a, on a platform and my crypto is not on platform like it’s off platform and it’s a cold storage, so I don’t know how they’re gonna utilize that. And then another part.Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so another part of that is like, when it comes to leverage, I’m not just in like philosophy. I’m not a big leverage guy because especially with an asset like crypto, and maybe it’s because I don’t know enough, maybe it’s because I’m not informed enough, uh, but like if I, if I, you know.What is it? You can do like 30% leverage on it. If I do that and then it falls and then I get a call, like I never wanna have to sell at the bottom. I never wanna have to do that. And so I’m a little bit uh leery and, you know, you could say afraid of using too much leverage if I don’t have to, uh, so.So it’s, it’s a, that’s a great question, man. I don’t, I don’t know if I’m gonna be leveraging crypto for real estate. I would, I would lean no right now. I will lean no right now cause one, I don’t want to put it back on brokerages and platforms based on the ones that they accept, and then, you know, I’m not a, I’m not a big fan. I’m not a big fan of, of uh a whole lot of leverage on my balance sheet anyway.

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You’re talking that talk, bro. You could tell, you know what you’re talking about in investing. So, let’s think about this, right? You know, you obviously are a father, two beautiful daughters.Let’s talk about it. How are you thinking about approaching building generational wealth for your children as a person that, you know,Because the average person when it comes to making money, a professional athlete, it’s like in those early years you, you make a lot and then it starts to kind of trickle down in the sense of like you’re retired and therefore you’re making a little less money. But like kind of what are some of the, the, the secrets that you’ve been doing early on to ensure that your kids are gonna be straight forlife.

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Well, one is investing for the long term, uh, and I think that that’s something you encourage your, your audience to do. And so it’s definitely doing that, utilizing the different, uh, tax advantage structures out there, Roth IRAs, 529s, to be able to, you know, pass wealth to them. And then also just having people on my team and having the lawyers and having the proper structure from an estate planning standpoint, uh, to always know that, OK, in the event that I passed, there’s a, there’s aYou know, there’s a guideline, there’s rails, and then understand it from an insurance standpoint, like, OK, you know, I mentioned balance sheet earlier, like, OK, in the event that, you know, I do click up out of here, you know, I wanna make sure that they’re OK, and, uh, you know, to be able to cover these homes and cover, you know, the different things and, you know, move forward. But I think all of that is just about education too, like you can’t do all that and then not educate them and not give them the uhI give them the tools and the foundation to be able to manage it much like, you know, my mom and dad and, you know, my grandparents did for me. So it will, it will really be encompassing all of that, man, and just, you know, having a plan, communicating the plan and, you know, just making sure they are, are locking step with what we’re doing it, you know.Making sure that they have a plan to, to, to work and earn, build their own pile because at the end of the day, you know, it’s my power. I built this pile, right? So they’ll, they’ll get some of it, but I’m often enjoy it too, you know, much like, much like we all want to do, right? But make sure that they have the tools necessary to, uh, you know, build, build their own, build their own uh their own fortress, their own financial fortress, if you wanna call it that.

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Well, early in this episode, I was saying how I was gravitated, or how I gravitated towards you because you have a different mindset and clearly you can hear it as you talk, bro. So I obviously just want to tip my hat and commend you because uh you know, it’s not often I’m talking to the Brandon Copeland’s and the carry blasting games of the world and y’all really getting to it. And so now my question really like for the, you know, probably the my maybe last question is like,You know, what’s next for car, right? You did 6 years in the league. I’m sure you could do 78 more, right? But like what would you say is next for you? What you working on rightnow?

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Uh well, first I just appreciate you saying that, man. If you’d even put me in the uh in the same conversation as is uh Brandon Copeland in there for you to say that, you know, you’re somebody who’s put me on a lot of games, so I really appreciate you saying that, uh.And so what’s next, man? You know, I have some ideas about what I wanna do from like, you know, an employment standpoint, but I, I, I just know the overall theme is like I wanna be positioned to help young athletes, you know, just get to 1520 years down the road and they can look back and be like, yo, I made these decisions cause, cause he helped me. Like I, I like being in that position to help people.You know what I’m saying, I’ve done that a couple of times in the league with teammates and, you know, you get a call two years down the road and like, hey man, that thing you told me to do that, that helped me make money. Like I made whoop whoop off of this. And uh that’s a good feeling. And so uh I, I think, you know, when I play again which, you know, you know, the opportunity, the right opportunity presents itself, I definitely go out there and get, get back in the fight, but if not, man, you know, no better way than to wrap it up on the Super Bowl.Move into a phase of, you know, recreating that feeling of helping people that I, that I’ve got to feel before. So

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I appreciate you coming on the show, man. There’s none but love, uh, and that’s the people.You know, we gotta tip our hat to the Super Bowl champion already said offline that I get to get the ring at least 34 times a year. You know what I’m saying. We gonna see get that ring, you know what I mean? I get 1% of it. Uh, but nonetheless, bro, I appreciate you and that’s it for this episode, people, make sure you like, subscribe, share this episode, you already know each and every week we hear this financial freestyle on Yahoo Finance.

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This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.