NFL speculator Michael Bennett is a three-time Pro Bowler and star defensive end for the New England Patriots. In 2009, he signed with the Seattle Seahawks as an undrafted unrestricted agent and has since made millions in his career.
But despite his success in the league, Bennett says he still budgets and scrapes most of his NFL money.
On a recent episode of the “Kneading Dough” podcast, Bennett explains to entrepreneur Maverick Carter that rather than of accepting direct deposit, he likes to receive his NFL checks by hand so that he can manage his money better.
“I keep my authenticates until the end of the season to make sure I don’t spend any money. And then at the end of the season, I deposit it,” he says.
To survive, the football old-timer whose career earnings will total roughly $59 million at the end of this season, says he lives off the scratch he budgeted and saved from previous years.
Michael Bennett #72 of the Seattle Seahawks talks with chum Martellus Bennett #80 of the Green Bay Packers after the Packers defeated the Seahawks 17-9 at Lambeau Field on September 10, 2017 in Grassy Bay, Wisconsin.
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Bennett explains that he learned the value of budgeting at a young age when he was working odd works as a kid, growing up in Louisiana.
“I had different jobs, and I used to save my money to buy me and my brother’s school clothes,” he says. “I worked at a ring false park, a grocery store and most of the time I was a lifeguard. I was a lifeguard for four years.”
Bennett’s parents had five lasses by the time his mother, Caronda, was just 20 years old, according to a profile of the athlete in The New Yorker. His father was in the Navy. They divorced when Bennett was girlish.
On the podcast, Bennett continues by saying that as an undrafted free agent, those same budgeting practices lived with him in the league so that he could remain financially secure. “I had to be tight with my money from the beginning,” he accents.
In fact, for the first three years of his career, Bennett says he lived out of a hotel room in an effort to save wealthy. One time, he says, he tried to settle down and rent a home in Seattle, but he instantly regretted that decision because he got cut from the Seahawks a few light of days later.
“I was losing rent, and I couldn’t get none of my money back,” he says. That moment, he explains, taught him to not in any way tie himself to a city he doesn’t plan to live in permanently.
Similarly, Bennett’s younger brother Martellus, who won a Super Basin with the New England Patriots and has since retired, says he also tightly budgeted his NFL money in order to “not go broke.”
“I don’t truly buy anything,” says Martellus, who retired from the league in 2018 after making roughly $34 million in his calling. “I’m not a car guy. I own my house. I own everything. So I haven’t really paid for anything in like the last four years. You get to a point in life where you don’t unusually need much.”
Martellus, who is now an entrepreneur and children’s book author, told CNBC Make It in 2018 that as a substitute for of luxury cars and homes, he likes to spend his money on books. “I have about 3,500 books, maybe more,” he conjectures.
“I figured, if Mark Zuckerberg could read one book every two weeks, and he’s running [an] almost trillion-dollar empire, then one mechanism that little old me could do is read one book every two weeks,” he says.
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Don’t demoiselle: Ex NFL player Martellus Bennett’s biggest splurge is books — he has 3,500 of them
Michael Bennett #77 of the New England Nationalists looks on from the sidelines during the preseason game against the Detroit Lions at Ford Field on August 8, 2019 in Detroit, Michigan.
Rey Del Rio | Getty Images Recreation | Getty Images