Pro Athletes: Know when an investment loan risk can change your life – or ruin it.

Take as a for instance: A third year NFL player who’s had a few stand out years nearing a new contract, and is expecting a salary jump equal to his impact. He’s confident in his game, he’s also now confident mixing with businessmen, owners and managers. Opportunities come his way regularly and more are expected with the new contract. He’ll see options for real estate investment with varying degrees of risk. Friendships and emotion may come into play in his decisions. After all the loan risks have even been spelled out to him, he’s confident – and no one gets into an investment expecting failure. But if the deal goes into default and he hasn’t protected himself, he could lose a whole lot more than his initial investment. Confidence in his game came from years of practice and hard work but bringing that confidence to investing without preparation could affect him for years to come.

I’m often called for help with defaulted loan negotiations by high net worth clients who have made investments involving a personal loan guarantee that has them in a perilous financial situation. Often their problem could have been avoided altogether through basic investment analysis combined with prudent asset protection planning.

Sometimes they don’t even know the difference between a straight cash investment, where their risk involves their original investment capital only vs an “at risk” investment, which involves the investor becoming liable for the entire project’s debt by signing on as the guarantor of a bank loan to the project. Read more →