Felix Trinidad broke??

Did anyone else hear about this? It seems that Felix has lost his fortune of $63,000,000.

http://ringtv.craveonline.com/news/332413-tito-trinidad-reportedly-broke-after-aide-squandered-63-million

to be fair to his aide, gov bonds are generally low risk, low reward investments. My dad is a financial advisor, and woulda probably suggested shares in super companies, like coke and Nike, as well as keeping some of your cash as just that, cash. Especially if you're earning in greenbacks

Well if he advised Puerto Rican govt bonds and stockpiling Argentinian pesos he would be looking for a new career kingy

Boxers earn their money primarily with their body. They aren't business master minds, and excelling in a sport doesn't make them shrewd investors. Likewise, you could gift a thicko like me fifty million quid, but that doesn't all of a sudden mean I'm a businessman. Why are so many fighters incapable of grasping this?

I actually find it hard to have any sympathy in these kind of cases anymore. There have been countless cases of fighters losing their hard-earned money through similar 'ventures', and still the next generation don't learn. Appreciate that he claims he's had a couple of snake oil salesmen whispering in his ear, trundling out lines about low risk, guaranteed return, tenfold profit or whatever the frig they've said, but why even entertain the idea in the first place? Why do people who aren't born in to money and then come in to it later in life always become obsessed with investing it in certain things in order to make more?

Point is, he (like many others) had no need to invest or take chances. He earned enough in the ring to take care of himself, his kids and their kids at least, for God's sake. Why couldn't Trinidad just be happy with his lot? And if you insist on trying to play the market, then what the hell are you doing handing over control of your money to someone else? Like I said, you might not be the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to financial matters - but you don't need to be a city banker to at least have a decent grasp of what's going in and out with a bit of straightforward maths. It's your money, and you earned it by putting your health at stake.

This is as close to a rant as I've seen from you Chris. you want some water?

Milky, I must plead ignorance with regards to Puerto Rican fiscal matters, I just think gov bonds generally end alright.

I'm not against investing, as an idea, reality is, money inflates, and as a results, devalues, can't begrudge a man trying to maintain the wealth - I do think too many new moneys try "turn that 52, to 120, 120 to 250, turn that 250 to half a milly"... Really, if you buy shares in proven companies with a track record, your money might oscillate a bit, but you can almost never go wrong. Most of the money I earned my first year of working (when my parents still paid for all my expenses) I invested in insurance broker companies, and banks. Returns aren't huge, but they are in the right direction.

88Chris05 wrote:Boxers earn their money primarily with their body. They aren't business master minds, and excelling in a sport doesn't make them shrewd investors. Likewise, you could gift a thicko like me fifty million quid, but that doesn't all of a sudden mean I'm a businessman. Why are so many fighters incapable of grasping this?

I actually find it hard to have any sympathy in these kind of cases anymore. There have been countless cases of fighters losing their hard-earned money through similar 'ventures', and still the next generation don't learn. Appreciate that he claims he's had a couple of snake oil salesmen whispering in his ear, trundling out lines about low risk, guaranteed return, tenfold profit or whatever the frig they've said, but why even entertain the idea in the first place? Why do people who aren't born in to money and then come in to it later in life always become obsessed with investing it in certain things in order to make more?

Point is, he (like many others) had no need to invest or take chances. He earned enough in the ring to take care of himself, his kids and their kids at least, for God's sake. Why couldn't Trinidad just be happy with his lot? And if you insist on trying to play the market, then what the hell are you doing handing over control of your money to someone else? Like I said, you might not be the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to financial matters - but you don't need to be a city banker to at least have a decent grasp of what's going in and out with a bit of straightforward maths. It's your money, and you earned it by putting your health at stake.

Couldn't have worded it better. Agree 100%

Ha ha, it's just something I can never understand, raf. These guys have a short career compared to most professions and make a hell of a lot of sacrifices to earn their living, as you know. Frustrates me that these kind of things still happen so regularly and all that hard work gets more or less undone, that's all.

I've got nothing against investing either - if someone knows what they're doing. As the saying goes, handling money well is an art, and Trinidad dedicated himself to an art about as far away from it as you can imagine! Unless you've made your money through being shrewd and by having a good grasp of business acumen, then I see no reason to risk losing it all by suddenly trying to be those things.

Like I said before, I guess it's just the fact that the same thing happens generation after generation which bugs me most about it all. But then again, the human race has been practising our old mistakes for as many generations back as you care to go.

No doubt that you will know more about all this kind of stuff than me, as I'm a complete layman on the subject. But while I could put him losing a few million, or even say a quarter of his fortune down to bad luck, finding a way to lose it all, regardless of circumstances, means that this bad luck must have been linked with some ego, ineptitude and carelessness as well, for me.

I'm not too clued up myself - my dad just taught me some basics, and hammered home that if sounds to good to be true, it generally is (saying that, he invested in Capitec bank in its very early days, and turned what equates to around £4k to around £450k, in eleven years). But that's really the exception, helped by an emerging economy, and at the time lax banking laws. The sad reality is, speaking to my dad over the years, the Tito story is one I could probably recite word for word - he's had that many clients come in asking if there's any recourse. Obviously none of them blew 60m but the story itself is one I've heard a few times. A lot of the times, it's good honest working people whose money gets caught in so much red tape from contracts they didn't read properly, that the big corporations pretty much just siphon them off. It's possibly why I have a bit more empathy towards Tito - the markets are a good place to make money, if you know what you're doing, and have a bit of luck - if you're a complete novice relying on a translator - well, it writes itself.

I read a story a couple of months ago about Floyd Mayweather, and how he had over $100,000,000 in a checking account. Now, I don't know if it's true, but if it is, I can see his thinking. Why let others invest it for you to make more when in reality,  $100,000,000 should be more than enough to last you the rest of your life?

If the worst happens and he burns through all the money by himself, at least he received some enjoyment out of it. Far better than it just disappearing through bad investments.

To be fair Atila, floyd needs $100m in a checking account for his weekly bling allowance

kingraf wrote:This is as close to a rant as I've seen from you Chris. you want some water?

Milky, I must plead ignorance with regards to Puerto Rican fiscal matters, I just think gov bonds generally end alright.

I'm not against investing, as an idea, reality is, money inflates, and as a results, devalues, can't begrudge a man trying to maintain the wealth - I do think too many new moneys try "turn that 52, to 120, 120 to 250, turn that 250 to half a milly"... Really, if you buy shares in proven companies with a track record, your money might oscillate a bit, but you can almost never go wrong. Most of the money I earned my first year of working (when my parents still paid for all my expenses) I invested in insurance broker companies, and banks. Returns aren't huge, but they are in the right direction.

Certainly worked for Buffett.....

I feel bad for Tito in as much as these stories normally finish in an ill advised comeback, which nobody needs to see. However Chris’ post does have some merit. To spunk your way through $63m is almost willfully stupid, is enough money for you never to need to be skint ever again, without even trying to do anything clever with it. Just chuck it in a bank and live out the rest of your days in absolute luxury.

However Tito is by no means the first fighter to end up like this and I would bet a couple of quid he will not be the last. I realise most promoters are reasonably self serving types but surely they have a duty of care to set their fighters up with financial advisors to advise them how to secure their futures, because stories like this reinforce a lot of the stereotypes about boxing being corrupt and surely serve to discourage young kids from taking up the sport, also seeing someone like Tito in the ring trying to recapture his long since passed youth is hardly the most edifying spectacle imaginable.

With $63m, if he could get that into a bank account paying 4% pa, then he could have paid himself a 'salary' of $2.8m a year for fifty years.

That would've taken him to age 85, following the RJJ fight in '08.

Very difficult to find a shred of sympathy there.

On a separate note, is this the first time in history that a Don King fighter has hit rock bottom financially and not blamed King himself?

That nineties kind of era seems to have produced a lot of top, top fighters who found a way to get through it all - a disproportionate amount, really.

Holyfield, broke as a joke and makes no denial of it. Tyson not seeing a cent of that $14 million settlement from Don as it went straight towards paying off his IRS bill. Jones, Toney and Bowe still trying to make money in various guises of boxing and having no success. Whitaker so skint that he's had to evict his own 73-year-old mother from a house he bought her back in the eighties in order to sell it to pay debts. Norris struggling with Parkinsons syndrome and with all his career money gone, too (although apparently him and his wife have built up a decent little business which has got them back on their feet somewhat). And now Tito.

Whilst I am in no doubt some fighters do get ripped off an exploited, it really is impossible to understate the stupidity and naivety of some of them. As anyone who has read Jack Newfield’s excellent book about Don King will know Tim Witherspoon sued Don for him ripping him off during his career and won a seven figure pay out. Within a year he had blown through the lot and managed to find himself skint again. That level of profligacy is pretty hard to legislate against.

Like others I find it hard to have too much sympathy here. I know he's no financial genius, but with the most basic of research he surely could have found one of about a hundred options that were safer and still lucrative. And the whole 'I had bad advice' thing is a joke. One look back in boxing history to the many other hard-luck stories of exploitation should have made him at least wary. It takes child-like naivety - as well as seemingly having absolutely no one with the slightest bit of sense around you with your best interests at heart - to lose that much money.

If you have $63m and your trying to invest to make more money then your coming over as a bit of a greedy man IMO.
No sympathy here I'm afraid.

Felix was probably sold the line that he had to make his money "work for him". It's something that wealthy people feel they have to do regardless of how much money they have.

I figured he was broke when he came out of retirement to fight winky, followed a couple of years later by when he looked like a fat version of himself against rjj.