By Zach Whitchurch
Something remarkable is happening in college sports. For the first time, an athlete can build real income while still in school, off their own name and effort. Like any opportunity worth having, it rewards the people who prepare for it. At 18 or 19, carrying a full practice and class schedule, you have a chance most adults never get at your age: to start building wealth decades early. What you do with that opportunity can shape the rest of your life.
This article is written for you, the athlete, and for the parent standing next to you. You’re both new to this, just sitting in different seats. You’re the one whose name is on the money and who lives with the pressure. Your parents have more life experience with money than you do but have probably never dealt with anything like this. Two playbooks, one paycheck.
This is for athletes at every level, not only the five-star recruit with seven-figure deals. A few thousand dollars handled well at 19 builds the same habits that shield a much larger number later, and that’s what good NIL financial planning looks like.
NIL Financial Planning: Why This Money Is Trickier Than It Looks
You might have heard the term HENRY, which stands for High Earner, Not Rich Yet. It usually describes doctors, lawyers, and business owners who make a good income but haven’t built much lasting wealth yet, often because no one ever sets a plan for where the money should go.
An NIL athlete is the youngest version of that we’ve ever seen. The income can be real, but there’s little saved behind it yet. There’s no cushion from years of work; the career window is short and can close in a few seasons; and the money is never guaranteed to last even that long. It’s a lot of earnings packed into a very short stretch of life, arriving for someone who might not have filed a tax return yet. That combination is exactly what makes a plan matter.
For the Player: Know Yourself Before You Know the Plan
The most useful thing I learned about coaching is that you don’t hand every player the same instructions. Some need structure. Others need room to work things out on their own. You have to know the individual before you know the plan.
That starts with you. Not your parents, not your advisor. Before anyone builds a budget or opens an account, be honest with yourself.
- What drives you?
- If you looked back in 10 years, what would you want to have done with this money?
- Do you already keep an eye on what you spend, or has money mostly just shown up and disappeared without much thought?
No particular answer is a problem, it’s just the honest starting point everything else gets built from.
The athletes who do well with this treat it like building a playbook. You decide, with the help of a great team, ahead of time, what this money is for: what gets saved, what gets invested so it grows, and what you live on. A plan made in advance does the hard thinking before the pressure arrives, so day to day you’re following something you already believe in.
A plan helps with something else too. When people you care about come to you for help, it’s easier to respond well when you’ve already decided what this money is for.
The other thing that safeguards you is understanding your own money well enough to talk about it. Ask questions until the answers make sense rather than nodding along, because it’s your name on the deal and your money in the account. If someone tells you something and it doesn’t feel right, say so. The plan only works if you understand it well enough to run it yourself one day.
For the Parent: You’ve Earned the Right to Want to Protect This
If you’re the parent, you’ve probably been the one driving to practice at six in the morning for a decade, covering club fees, and rearranging your life around your kid’s shot at this. Wanting to protect the money now and to have a say in it comes from love and years of sacrifice, with a desire to help your athlete.
This is one more stretch of that same work. Putting the right team around your athlete now, then letting them lean on it, is how you keep helping without taking over. It’s their name on the deal, and learning to carry that is part of what you’re helping them build.
Your first job is understanding who you’re handing a game plan to before deciding what that plan should say. Your kid isn’t you at 19, and this income isn’t a paycheck. It’s closer to running a small, unpredictable business with cash flow that could dry up tomorrow. So the role that fits is closer to a coach than a general manager: someone who sets the structure, teaches the fundamentals, and stays on the sideline during the game without touching the ball. Running the money for them while they stay in the dark teaches the wrong lesson at the very moment the right one would do the most good.
The Unexpected Tax Reality
Taxes are one part of the game plan where the player must lean on someone with more experience.
NIL income usually arrives on a 1099-NEC, not a W-2, which means no taxes are taken out along the way. And it’s more than just cash in an account. The athlete counts as self-employed, so on top of regular income tax there’s self-employment tax to plan for. Non-cash deals count too. Free gear, travel, a car, and meals can all be taxable.
Some athletes also receive revenue-sharing payments from their schools, now allowed under the House v. NCAA settlement, which permits Division I schools to share athletics revenue directly with student-athletes. That can be a second kind of income with its own tax treatment.
This isn’t the full list, and the specifics belong with your advisory team and a qualified tax professional. For the player, the takeaway is simple: set aside money for taxes as it comes in, so April doesn’t show up with a bill and nothing left to cover it. For the parent, the job is to make sure that habit is built early, before the first big deal makes it feel unnecessary. Athlete tax situations get complicated fast, and it’s one of the places where good help early saves a lot of trouble later.
Build a Game Plan, Then Stick to It
When a lot of money arrives in a short time, it’s natural to start treating it like a stream that will never stop. Our brains are wired for it. Once you’ve built a solid plan with someone you trust, the whole point is sticking to it.
For NIL income, the foundation starts small. A cash cushion. Taxes set aside separately from spending money. A rule against letting one big season set a spending level the slower months can’t keep up with. This money is lumpy by nature, a large deal one season and nothing the next, so the budget should be built around a careful estimate rather than the best season you’ve ever had. Long-term investing comes after that foundation is set, not before.
For the player, that means treating a big season as an outlier, not the new normal. For the parent, it means holding the structure steady when a strong deal lands and the urge to loosen it is strongest.
You Can’t Play the Game for Them
Here’s the line I’d underline if I could. As a coach, an advisor, or a parent, you can’t go play the game for someone else. That’s exactly why the plan matters. The goal is to build the habits and understanding that let an athlete run their own money one day, or work well with advisors they trust, rather than to run it for them.
That means real conversations about what came in this month and where it’s going, taxes included. For the parent, treat those as shared decisions rather than decisions handed down. For the player, ask about anything that isn’t clear instead of letting someone else handle it out of sight. For most of your life, a parent or a coach has made the big calls for you. NIL asks you to grow into that seat faster than almost anyone your age ever must. If you do it right, treat it with a long-term growth mindset, and don’t spend it in the first year on “stuff,” it can become life-altering money that may benefit you for the rest of your life.
Why Families Work With Solidarity
When we look at professional athletes and their situations, we’ve found that the way we work with them and the way we work with entrepreneurs is similar. The language changes and the teaching goes up, though the core approach holds. Sudden, complicated income is sudden, complicated income, whether it comes from selling a company or signing a brand deal.
What athletes and families tell us they value most is that we take the time to teach. Not just telling you what to do, but making sure you understand why, so the plan is yours and not a set of instructions you’re blindly following. For a young person and a family seeing a large sum for the first time, that understanding is where the real work happens, and it’s why these relationships last.
Having played and coached soccer myself helps me connect with both the player and the parent, but plenty of former athletes have become advisors, so that isn’t the real difference. The difference is that we spend the time and act as a real partner to the family.
Every player and parent wants to know someone is looking out for their best interest, and when the money is this new, having the right team around you matters even more. For us, that means being the one trusted team a family can bring every important financial decision to.
What the Season Leaves Behind
When the season ends, the score from any one game stops mattering fast. What stays with a player is what they learned about showing up, handling pressure, and being part of a team.
NIL ends too, for every athlete it touches, and that’s true even for most who turn pro. What outlasts the career isn’t any single deal or revenue-share check. It’s the habits built while the money was arriving: saving, investing, living on less than what came in, and being deliberate about all of it. Those are the things that can still be feeding your family long after the last check clears. For the player, that’s the real prize; for the parent, that’s the real job.
If your family is in the middle of this right now, the decisions you make in the first year tend to matter the longest. We’d welcome the chance to talk it through with you. You can reach us at info@solidaritywealth.com or 385-374-1665.
NIL Income and Taxes: Frequently Asked Questions
Is NIL income taxable?
Yes. NIL income is treated as self-employment income, not a paycheck. Taxes aren’t withheld when it’s paid, so the athlete is responsible for setting money aside and reporting it, including the value of non-cash compensation like gear, travel, or meals.
Do college athletes pay quarterly taxes on NIL money?
In many cases, yes. Because taxes aren’t withheld from NIL payments, athletes with significant or steady income may need to make quarterly estimated tax payments throughout the year instead of settling everything at once in April.
How much of NIL income should be set aside for taxes?
Enough that an unexpected bill in April isn’t a problem. The right amount depends on total income, the state, and whether the athlete owes self-employment tax, so a good advisory team and a tax professional can help set the percentage. The principle is to set it aside as the money arrives, not after.
Should a student-athlete work with a financial advisor?
Often, yes, once NIL income becomes significant or recurring. An advisor can help with the tax side and set up structure for saving and long-term investing. For smaller or one-off deals, a good accountant may be enough to start.
Should parents control their child’s NIL money?
The stronger role is teaching, not controlling. Direct conversations about what’s being earned and where the rest goes, taxes included, help the athlete build their own habits rather than inherit someone else’s system.
What should an athlete do with NIL money first?
Before anything else, set aside a portion for taxes. From there, build a cash cushion and avoid treating a strong month or semester as the new normal for spending, since NIL income can shift from one season to the next.
About Zach
Zach Whitchurch is the President and a wealth advisor at Solidarity Wealth, with a background in behavioral finance and a focus on helping clients build the financial and life habits that support lasting long-term wealth. He holds the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® and Certified Private Wealth Advisor® designations and co-founded Solidarity.
Solidarity Wealth is a registered investment adviser. This material is solely for informational purposes. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Solidarity Wealth and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by Solidarity Wealth unless a client service agreement is in place.
