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27 January 2025

Financial education: From the pitch to the purse

News & Insights

Tyme Regent-Bascombe

Financial education: From the pitch to the purse

As an athlete, father and financial planner, I jumped at the opportunity to run a series of personal finance workshops for Manchester United’s Women’s Academy. As an advocate for open conversations about money, it’s always a pleasure to encourage discussions around what can be a sensitive subject with fellow athletes.

We often think of financial literacy as something that’s only relevant for adults but the earlier we start teaching children about money, the better equipped they’ll be to make sound financial decisions throughout their lives. By introducing concepts like budgeting, saving, and investing at a young age, we can help children develop healthy financial habits that will serve them well in the future.

The workshops consisted of short sessions with the under 16s and below teams, which focussed on three key themes:

  • Female footballer’s earnings
  • The cost of different lifestyles
  • The importance of saving and investing

What do Super League players actually earn?

We began the workshops looking at pictures of several of the Lionesses who currently play in the Super League and I asked the girls what they thought their earnings were. The responses were mixed but one theme was consistent. Most of the girls assumed the wages were more comparable to those in the Premier League. This led to discussions around the varied range in wages throughout the Super League and what the average player earns.

What is the cost of the lifestyle you want?

Using the average wages of the Super League players as their budget, the girls broke out into groups and created their ideal lifestyles. We then came back together, and the girls shared their results. Whilst the results were varied, what was encouraging is most of the girls included some form of saving and investing in their budgets, and they were all really engaged in the discussions, unafraid to challenge one another’s decisions.

What did surprise me is that a lot of the girls plan to live at home with their parents indefinitely to avoid paying rent. Maybe this will change as they get older!

Why save and invest?

Saving and investing is especially important for athletes, particularly when you consider that the average female footballer retires from her athletic career in her early 30s.

Similarly to perfecting your craft, time is your best friend when it comes to saving and investing. As James Clear puts in his book Atomic Habits; “success is the product of daily habits”. To illustrate this, I conducted a well-known thought experiment with the girls involving a penny and £1,000,000. Without giving too much away the girls could not believe the results.

Giving back to our community

Although I am a born and raised Gooner, I am thankful I had the opportunity to support aspiring athletes and empower them to speak openly about money. My hope is that they are a little more informed when they come to making financial decisions and feel empowered to ask questions because love it, or hate it, money impacts all aspects of our lives.

At Five Wealth, we are committed to fostering financial literacy within our community. I look forward to hosting similar workshops in the future, watch this space.