A Wrestler’s Budget by Coach Eric
“Those who possess time are often not aware of its value.” – Sunday Adelaja
Sunday Adelaja
How will you spend your 148,504 total available minutes over the next 104 calendar days this season? Is your minute of time worth a penny, a nickel, a dime, a quarter, or a dollar? Let us assume you earn $1 per minute that provides you with a maximum balance of $148,504 in your Wolves Wrestling Season bank account. For perspective, if you earned a dollar a minute at a standard 40-hour work week job then your annual salary is almost $125,000. However, like the real-world IRS, wrestlers are required to pay non-negotiable taxes that I am just going to take out of your available student-athlete time.
Therefore, 49,920 of your available minutes or $49,920 dollars will be spent to sleep at least 8 hours each night. This is a critical part of your recovery plan to cope with the cumulative stressors of school, the Wolves Wrestling Season and life as a teenager. Another $25,200 will be spent attending class over 60 days during the 3 1/2 month season. If we additionally assume 2 hours each day of school or $7,200 is spent doing homework and another 2 hours each calendar day of the season or $12,480 is spent traveling and preparing to leave your house (showering, dressing, etc), that leaves an available budget of $46,504 to be spent on the process towards achieving your February 2019 wrestling goals.
A student-athlete is expected to make attending school and their academic studies a priority. Therefore, a $416 penalty tax will be applied for every class skipped or assignment missed, because you have to spend additional time to make it up and this takes away from your 46,504 available minutes. A wrestler cannot save money or produce more time towards accomplishing their athletic goals by sacrificing or procrastinating their student responsibilities. You are a student first and participation in wrestling is a privilege paid by maintaining your eligibility to participate. Your teammates and coaches are counting on you.
A maximum of $7,320 can be spent on practice with coaching and about $10,560 will be spent on competition travel, weigh-ins and in Cry Wolf Battle on the mat. This leaves each wrestler with a budget of $29,184, if we assume they do not eat. However, we want our wrestlers healthy and strong. So, a healthy diet tax of $12,480 is applied for time to eat and stay hydrated every day, resulting in an available $16,704 student-athlete budget. This is equivalent to saving about 9% of your income, which is better than the average American.
“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.”
William Shakespeare
My Master of Business Administration (MBA) Degree and understanding of the time-value of money recommends that you try to save and invest at least 10 percent of your annual income for retirement and emergencies. There is also a “Multiply by 25” rule that helps you estimate how much you should save for retirement and the “4 Percent” rule that frames how much you should withdrawal during retirement. Multiply your desired annual income by 25 to estimate your retirement savings needs and then plan to sustain your quality of life within 4 percent of that amount annually throughout retirement. I have also read somewhere that if you can save 70 percent of your annual salary for 10 years then you can retire from that job and pursue your passion, if your current job does not satisfy your heart. Fidelity recommends the following targets as part of your long term financial goals. A wrestler can think of this as having the patience to consistently invest time in the process over many years to accomplish their long term wrestling goal.
- By age 30: Have the equivalent of your annual salary saved
- By age 40: Have three times your annual salary saved
- By age 50: Have six times your annual salary saved
- By age 60: Have eight times your annual salary saved
- By age 67: Have 10 times your annual salary saved
Getting back to our Wrestler’s Budget, according to an NBC poll, the American Teen spends an average of 6 hours and 40 minutes on a screen, most often their cell phone, each day. Therefore, a cell phone tax of $41,600 is applied and every student-athlete now owes the IRS $24,896. Your available time budget easily becomes a negative $24,896 unless you make healthier life choices and change your habits to support your wrestling goals. Similar to managing your weight, consistently making unhealthy nutrition choices will cumulate to make it difficult. Most wrestlers do not have to make huge life changes, but they do need to be consistently disciplined in their minute to minute choices.
“You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.”
Zig Zigler
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/better/amp/ncna850056
There is an additional $17,880 Coachable Tax applied to those individual student-athlete(s) who know more or know better than the coaches, who possess more than 35 years of experience around the sport and When a wrestler chooses to be non-coachable then they will sacrifice the equivalent cost associated with coaching opportunities during practice and competition. After coaching and teaching teens for over 15 years, there will be time wasted on negative and unhealthy behaviors such as rumors, gossip, self-doubt, being angry and justifying personal actions by blaming others for their behavior. All ages also waste time by making assumptions based on their perceptions, especially those with extensive Teenager experience (#sarcasm). An additional Teenage Choice Tax of $17,880 is applied to those individual student-athlete(s) who consistently allow negativity to dictate their choices and behavior.
By the way, if you are a girl or on JV, then you have 14 days less of available time and earn $16,704 less than those on Varsity. You owe the IRS at least $41,600. Life is not fair and there are people who benefit from privileges that are currently unavailable to you. I recommend you focus on what you can control and invest into learning how to generate more time value instead of complaining about a situation you cannot control. You have control over your attitude towards the situation and your choice to act within the environment you find yourself. If you do not like the choice or environment then commit to changing it. Decide to succeed. Choose to be a Champion.
One of your teammates chose to invest their time and dedicated themselves to save at least an additional $20,000 in opportunity minute-dollars between March 2017 and October 2018 as they completed tasks from our Werewolf Checklist. They chose to focus on process over outcome and their time investment will pay dividends along their wrestling journey. If you are starting the season with a negative account balance, what will you choose to sacrifice towards separating yourself from those wanting to achieve the same goals this Wolves Season? Are you going to be coachable and avoid the Teenager Choice Tax to save an additional $35,760 to have a positive bank account in February? Budget your choices intentionally to achieve your February wrestling goals.
My hope is for the thoughts shared to be a significant time management and financial life lesson opportunity for anyone who took the time. To save time and accomplish your February goals, value yourself, spend your time to improve every day, and be better in the next minute than you were in the previous minute. Your coaches, parents and community believe in each and every one of you as a person first, then as a student and lastly as an athletic performance.
“Discipline Equals Freedom.”
Jocko Willink