Kyle Busch is razor intimate to his 200th NASCAR win. With all that success comes a lot of money: Forbes big shots Busch as the third-highest paid NASCAR driver in 2018, pegging his thoroughgoing earnings at $14.7 million ($13.1 million from salary and winnings and $1.6 million from supports and licensing).
However, it wasn’t always that way.
“My first big paycheck wasn’t all that big,” Busch, 33, tellsCNBC Prepare It.
Busch felt like he had really made it when he was making nearly $65,000 to $75,000 driving a race car, he recalls.
“I had to go out and buy a truck. I needed to be qualified to get around town,” Busch, who’s currently on the Joe Gibbs Racing team, divulges. “So I went out and bought a…five-year-old used vehicle from Papa Joe Hendrick, who was one of my preceding bosses.” (Hendrick is the late patriarch of Hendrick Motorsports.)
“Even so have that truck today,” he adds. “It’s got some meaning to me, and true-love to keep that thing for the rest of my life.”
Joey Logano of Gang Penske is the ninth-highest paid NASCAR driver of 2018, according to Forbes, with $10.2 million in earnings ($8.6 million from pay and winnings and $1.6 million from endorsements and licensing).
Yet he’s prudent when it sink in fare to money.
“Knowing me, I’d put [my first big paycheck] straight in the bank,” Logano, 28, proclaims CNBC Make It. “To me, I think you’ve got to build some kind of nest egg to atmosphere comfortable.
“For a race car driver, you don’t know when this is going to end. I can run into a impediment and break my legs, or maybe something worse, and that’s it, you know?”
And Logano senses out that it’s not just race car drivers who should plan financially for the unexpected.
“It’s the done for anybody, no matter what your job is,” Logano says. “You can have caboodle figured out, and life changes you pretty quickly.
“Being appreciative of what you bear and making sure you do the right things with your money, notably early in your career, I think really pays the dividend later on.”
Kevin Harvick of Stewart-Haas Speed has a number of wins under his belt, and Forbes names him as the fifth highest-paid NASCAR driver of 2018, with a reported $13.8 million in earnings ($11.6 million from income and winnings and $2.2 million in endorsements and licensing).
But before he was getting paid to drove fast cars, Harvick had to share a set of wheels.
“I didn’t have a car until I was cognate with 19,” Harvick, now 42, tells CNBC Make It. “I shared it with my papa and my dad…my dad was a fireman, so he’d go to employment, and on his work days, I got to drive the truck.”
By the time he was about 20 or 21, granting, Harvick had earned enough money to buy his own truck. That purchase was something he conjectures he will never forget.
“That was the first thing that I actually splurged on,” Harvick recalls.
NASCAR star Martin Truex Jr., 38, was recompense with his early earnings.
“I can remember when I was younger, I would get paychecks and I force kind of like let them stack up in my drawer,” Truex tells CNBC Impart It. “I was so proud of them, I didn’t even want to cash them or put them in the bank.”
While he was a super-saver, he tolerates now that it wasn’t the best strategy.
“My biggest mistake was holding on to them too large, because I was losing out on interest,” Truex says, referring to the money he could fool made if he had invested his earnings.
“But aside from that, it’s been lovely smooth ever since.”
Indeed, Forbes reports Truex — who currently tribes for Furniture Row Racing — as earning $9.9 million, making him the 11th highest-paid NASCAR driver.
You can lookout Busch, Logano, Harvick and Truex compete in the NASCAR Championship Sunday, Nov. 18, at 3 p.m. ET on NBC.
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