For anyone with even a passing knowledge of sports the name Jerry Rice conjures images of “how’d he do that” catches and Super Bowl rings. But Rice has been retired for ten years. In that time he has avoided the trap that so many like him have fallen into: big spending during money making years leading to millionaires becoming flat out broke.
Rice has joined forces with MetLife to share his story in the hopes that his successful retirement and the way he got there will rub off on the average Joe.
In a poll conducted by MetLife, the insurance company found that 72% of Americans have a plan in place for retirement. 55% of respondents however believe protecting their assets is not as important as growing them. For MetLife that number is an opportunity to grow their business. For Jerry Rice it’s a recipe for a losing record.
Bringing it back to what he did arguably better than anyone else for almost two decades, Rice says a successful retirement depends on offense and defense.
“The most important thing is offensive and that’s for investments and defense is for insurance. That was my process. I just felt like I needed to be able to step away from the game, be comfortable and live a good life.”
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Keeping with the football analogy Rice admits he could never have successfully retired alone, without the experts. “To win football games it was all about the coaching, the advisers, to come up with a strategy and and I think you need to do the same in retirement,” he says.
That’s exactly what Jill Williams, a financial planner at MetLife is offering. “There’s definitely a disconnect,” she says, citing her company’s study, “ and that’s where good coaching comes into play.” She notes that she is there to make sure “consumers not only are focused on the offensive side of their plan but the defensive side. So we help clients protect what they worked so hard to save.”
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