While playing professional football, Jedidiah Collins realized that he didn’t know how to manage money. Despite earning a high salary, he’d spend most of his paycheck right after he received it and didn’t know how to plan for the future. With encouragement from his family and mentor, he began to learn about personal finance, eventually studying for the CFP® exam during the offseasons. After a few years of working in wealth management, Jedidiah realized his passion was helping people who were just beginning their financial journeys.   

“Rich is having a lot of money today. Wealth is how many tomorrows I don’t have to worry about money.”

Today, Jedidiah runs Your Money Vehicle, an online certification course in financial literacy. His hope is that students will learn basic principles of personal finance and put them to use throughout their lives. 

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Jedidiah Collins, CFP®, is a former NFL player, Amazon best-selling author, podcaster, and adjunct professor at Washington State University. He took many principles and behaviors away from the game of football but was also faced with the reality of how unprepared he was for the financial opportunity of professional sports. This dilemma drove him to study for his Certification in Financial Planning® while he was still playing in the NFL.

Transitioning away from football, Jed knew he would pursue real life experience with his CFP® and went to work in wealth management. Jed quickly discovered that his passion was delivering financial wellness workshops for those at the beginning of their financial journey, not the end. This led Jed to create Your Money Vehicle, an online certification course in financial literacy. 

Social media, website, book link:

• Your Money Vehicle: yourmoneyvehicle.com
• @FullbackFinance on Twitter 
• @FullbackofFinance on Instagram
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jedidiah-collins 

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

• During his career, Jedidiah was cut from team rosters 12 times. He realized through those ups and downs that he was financially illiterate: He’d spend most of his paycheck the same day he received it. Pushed by his brothers and a mentor, Jedidiah studied for the CFP® exam during the offseasons and became a resource to his teammates. 
• Athletes often receive large sums of money at a very young age, and that income is very risky because it could dry up at any time. Jedidiah thinks athletes are beginning to look at their sports careers as jumping-off points for the rest of their lives, in which they’ll continue to build their wealth. 
• Jedidiah’s platform, Your Money Vehicle, offers workshops and online courses to students of all ages who are interested in expanding their financial literacy. He wants them to begin to see money as a vehicle that can help them reach their goals, not a goal in itself. 
• Money Vehicle covers the first 10 steps in a financial journey. It translates the principles in a financial plan through stories and analogies so that they resonate with all kinds of students.
• As more states begin to require financial literacy education in high school, Jedidiah hopes his curriculum will be adopted for high school seniors, but thinks it’s relevant to anyone between the ages of 16 and 24. When someone is learning to drive, he believes they should also be learning to operate their money vehicle. 
• Jedidiah encourages listeners to complete this sentence: “Money is ___.” Beginning to understand your own relationship to money is the first step in learning how to manage it, he says. 

WORDS OF WISDOM:

“Even though I was in the NFL living this dream, I realized I was not going to be able to capture this opportunity if I didn’t change the way I viewed money.” 

“[Money] is not rocket science. It’s not open-heart surgery, when it comes to money. It’s simply a language that we’ve never discussed, this taboo, kind of foreign topic. That’s what’s so neat: Empowering people to take these steps to really take control of their financial lives. It’s not that they can’t comprehend the concepts, it’s truly that they’ve never been introduced to what they are.” 

“The amount of money really doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to use it.” 

“Rich is having a lot of money today. Wealth is how many tomorrows I don’t have to worry about money.” 

“For so long we’ve thought of money as the goal, the end point, the destination. By saying money is a vehicle, it’s a tool, we change it from a noun to a verb. We really enjoy that perspective of: Now this is something that I control. This is something that I use.” 

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If you liked this episode, here’s another I think you’ll enjoy: Episode 46: Charting Your Unique Financial Path with Lauryn Williams