Here’s a fun topic, retirement planning.

What is a good plan for a job with a ton of transition and low job security in regards to retirement? This is a complete guess, but I would say most full time S&C coaches will have somewhere in the range of 3-5 jobs in their career. That means 5 different retirement plans, which can be a mess to organize.

My advice would be getting an IRA (Individual retirement account) where you merge all these retirement plans you are collecting at each school. At a certain point, you will lose track of all the 401ks and not be sure what you have or don’t have.

I know this is not something young S&C coaches care about. But at a certain point in your life, it will matter a great deal. You will hit this proverbial wall and will wonder how far you are away from not getting up at 4am and giving up weekends, missing holidays and events, or whatever else you care about. You will begin to wonder how many years until you can wake up with your family and get them to school. The point being, you are going to think about when you can retire and what it will take money wise.

What you can do with your 401Ks is be aggressive. It’s smaller pools of money that are far away from being needed. You’re playing with house money to a degree, so why not go big? It’s a calculated risk, but over time it should pay off. But even if you do not pay attention to what your 401K is doing, you should at least have an exit plan to relocate the funds you accrued to a larger consolidated IRA so you are compounding a larger pool of money over time.

The other aspect is when they offer you matching up to a certain amount, take the max. It’s free money. Yes you will take more out of your paycheck short term, but you will see that money back in the future in double by taking the max to what they match. Again, you are probably not that concerned about what your company matches or does not match, but I can tell you that at one point in your career you will think back to the schools that did a 100% match and wonder why don’t all schools do that?

Do not contribute to your IRA if you are contributing to your 401K. Said differently, contribute to one at a time. There is no need to take additional money out for retirement if you are far away from retirement. Chances are you are making little and need all the cash you can have for emergencies, rent, utilities, etc. Plus with 401K they deduct, but with an IRA you have to contribute from savings. Save the hassle until you need to.

Lastly, and this is something that takes personal discipline, is to exhaust all resources and amenities. If they provide food, eat that food and avoid going out to eat. If they provide toiletries, use them and don’t buy them. If they provide gear and shoes, don’t buy more. Use your benefits. If you don’t use your benefits, settle for a cheaper plan with a higher deductible.

I find a lot of time we can simply close the gap of wage contribution to a retirement plan by optimizing what you get from work. There are definitely a handful of perks of working with a high level athletic department. It may not be direct compensation, but it could be a whole host of things you need to purchase on your own that you don’t have to because it’s provided. From the school’s perspective, it’s technically part of your compensation package. If you are not using that to its full potential, you are burning cash.

Recap:

1. Get a job, start a 401K and put max amount they will match and opt for aggressive for investment strategy After your first job, get an IRA
2. Leave a job take that 401K and roll that into a IRA you set up
   1. Side note you will want to have someone that you can trust that is managing this for you
   2. You are one degree of separation from someone you know will be capable and trustworthy – simply got to ask people you trust
      1. Ancillary benefit – you now have ‘a guy’
3. 4. New job start a 401K and only contribute to that only, again max amount they will match
   1. Leave that job, roll into IRA and keep going