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- Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt told CNBC his best money advice is to save more than half your pay.
- The 8-time gold medalist wasn’t always good with money, he admitted.
- “If you make $10, save $6, and then you can figure out what to do with the rest,” he said.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Usain Bolt has said that the most valuable personal finance lesson he’s learned is to save more than half of his pay.
“Then you can spend the rest and pay bills,” he told CNBC Make It. “I tell people if you make $10, save $6, and then you can figure out what to do with the rest.”
The 34-year-old Jamaican sprinter, who retired in 2017, admitted that he wasn’t always good with money, and splurged more than he’d have liked to on his journey to worldwide fame. He said he would have advised his younger self to save as much as he could, according to CNBC.
Bolt set out to make big bucks after his 2004 Olympic debut at Athens when he was just 18. He said he was fortunate to have a team around him that mentored him on how money worked, and that “really helped me to understand how to save.”
The track star’s fortune has placed him at number 45 on the Forbes list of highest-paid athletes.
He has delved into music production and raised a family since retiring. Still, he religiously works out despite not having to race because of a bet with friends that he’d “get fat” in retirement.
Bolt said that witnessing athletes dealing with long-term injuries opened his eyes to the troubling reality of what could happen if he had no savings.
He said the best career advice he’d received was from his father. “He said to me: ‘Son, anything you want, just work hard and be dedicated and you will be fine.’ And for me I’ve always lived by that,” Bolt said.
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