Full CircleLegacy Partners
Full CircleLegacy Partners
The Journey, in Depth
Every athlete family we meet is somewhere on this path. Some are in a high school gym with letters piling up on the counter. Some already have a second contract and a tax return that runs forty pages. The work changes at each stage. The purpose never does.
Read the stage you are living in now. Then read the one after it, because that is the one you still have time to prepare for.
Stage 01
The mail starts showing up sophomore year. Then the calls. A coach, then a trainer, then somebody who says he knows a guy at a shoe company. Most of it is noise. Some of it matters a great deal. It is hard to tell which is which when you are seventeen and the phone will not stop buzzing.
So we slow it down. We sit at the kitchen table with you and your parents and separate the real offers from the flattery. We explain what a school is actually promising in writing, and what it is only saying out loud. We check eligibility rules before somebody trips over one. And we start the money conversation now, while the numbers are still small and a mistake still costs almost nothing.
The money habits you build at seventeen are the ones you will still be spending with at twenty-seven.
Stage 02
Your first real check usually lands in the middle of a semester, somewhere between a road trip and a midterm. Nobody withholds anything from it. There is no HR department, no benefits packet, no one checking your work. You are running a small business now, whether you asked for one or not.
So we build the unglamorous machinery that keeps it standing. Separate accounts for spending, for saving, and for the tax bill. A record of every deal, every deliverable, and every payment that was promised and never arrived. We read each agreement before your name goes on it and tell you plainly what you are giving away. And if you earn in three states, you may owe taxes in three states. We plan for that in September, not in April.
An unread clause can follow you for years, and an unpaid tax bill grows quietly while you sleep.
Stage 03
Draft week moves fast. Everyone is happy, everyone is busy, and a surprising number of decisions get made in hotel rooms near midnight. That is the worst possible moment to work out who is actually on your side and what they charge for it.
So we settle all of that before the phone rings. Agent, attorney, and accountant in one conversation, with their roles clear and their fees written down. We walk the contract with you and your parents and show the difference between what is guaranteed and what is only possible, because those are two very different numbers. We put disability coverage in place while you are healthy enough to qualify for it. Then we agree out loud, as a family, on what happens when relatives start asking.
The first contract quietly sets the floor for every contract that comes after it.
Stage 04
For most players a career is shorter than a mortgage. The checks are large and the calendar is short, and that combination is the reason so many careers end with far less than anyone expected.
Our work here is steady and mostly boring, which is the point. We keep a spending number you can live on without thinking about it. We build income that keeps arriving after the last game, earned by your investments instead of your body. We review the insurance every single year, because your contract and your health both change. We look hard at every business a friend brings you, and we say no more often than we say yes. And we keep the paperwork current: beneficiary forms, wills, the small documents that decide big things.
Every year without a plan is a year the career clock keeps running anyway.
Stage 05
This is the part the highlight reels skip. One morning the game is over, and the money has to keep working without you. It can. It just has to be told how, in writing, well before that morning arrives.
We put the structure in place while it is still simple. Wills, trusts, and estate documents that say what you actually want, checked against each other so they do not quietly contradict. A funded plan for taking care of your parents that does not drain you in the process. Giving that lands where you intend it to land, in your name, on purpose. And the piece we care about most: teaching your own children what nobody taught you, early enough that it takes hold.
An estate gets written either by you or by a court, and only one of them knows your family.
Wherever you are on the path
Tell us where your family is today: high school, college, draft season, or ten years into a career. The first conversation is free, and you will leave it knowing what should happen next, whether you work with us or not.