Greg McGauley, Head of Merrill Private Wealth Management

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Download Thumbtack and start a project today. So the JR Sport Brief Show coast to coast all over the United States of America, we know we got a busy weekend, we got the Olympics going on, we've also had NFL training camps, we got the Hall of Fame game, but we had a big announcement last week that I want to share with you. My good friends, Greg McCauley, Merrill Private Wealth Management, he's the head. They had an announcement last week that they are teaming up with IMG Academy to help educate students on financial literacy.

We can learn about athletics, but it's also great to learn about how you can manage your money and your life as well. Greg, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you, JR?

I'm excellent. Thank you for taking the time to hop on. This is a good time to have this chat, especially as we hear so much about young athletes who are finding wealth at an early age with NIL deals and in high school. There's just so much going on. Tell us about this new announcement, this partnership between Merrill and IMG. Yeah, so we're really excited about it. I don't think I've ever been excited to start a school year, but this partnership is really based on providing financial education to their students. And it does come at an important time in their lives as you think about their ability to develop athletically as well as academically. IMG is really committed to having financial education as a big part of their enrichment program. And so when you think about the pathways that some of these students will follow, some will go on to get NIL opportunities, which is fantastic. And that has a set of factors that go into it at a young age where they have to start to make financial decisions along with their parents that will require them to think about money in a different way, about their spending, their savings, their investing, as well as their ability to earn money and pay taxes on that. And so whether they do that, or maybe some will eventually go on to be pro athletes, or they'll go on to just enjoy their sport and maybe end up going to the Olympics someday and figuring out how to fund their own Olympic campaign, or they'll play sports until the end of college, and then they'll go on to careers in science and math and technology and business and medicine. And so all of those pathways have financial implications. And our goal is to educate those students so that they're able to make great financial decisions, regardless of the pathway that they follow in terms of their life.

Greg McCauley is here with us, the JR Sport Reshow Coast to Coast on the Infinity Sports Network. As the head of Merrill Private Wealth, you guys decided to partner up with IMG. There's so many organizations out there.

Why IMG specifically? Well, IMG is really focused on delivering, you know, a great academic experience to their students, as well as great athletic development. And so for us, providing financial education to an organization that's committed to it really helps us be able to deliver great content and curriculum to them through our interactions with them on campus, not only with the students, but with their parents. And so it's really their commitment to this that helps us be able to get excited about it and to be able to create an opportunity to deliver great curriculum to them through our Better Money Habits program, which is Bank of America has developed over a long period of time. And through that curriculum, we're really able to deliver things that are fantastic and help them make better financial decisions, as well as be able to think about things like budgeting and how to save and the power of compounding, which has all been like topics that young people need to understand. And I think in a world today that it's more complex, the earlier they're able to learn that, the better they're going to be for their entire lives.

Well, Greg, we got people listening in North America, whether they be in Canada, the United States of America, people whose kids are involved in youth leagues and high school leagues and traveling leagues and what have you. What is the biggest element of financial literacy as it relates to young people that you think gets omitted? What aren't young people not learning, even young, young, young? I would say that really around the idea of, of a couple of concepts, one is around spending, right? So if you're able to properly manage your budget and properly manage your spending, it gives you the ability to save and invest and that savings and investing is able to compound over time. And that's how wealth is really created. There's a very famous study called the, the Williams study. And it talks about the fact that like why wealth fades away after three generations. And it's usually gone after three generations, 90% of the time. And the reason for that is 24% of the time is because the rising generation is not educated.

And 60% of the time, 60% of the time it's because of improper or bad communication between one generation and the next. If we're able to help the students at IMG avoid not being properly educated, then we're starting to change a generation in terms of their spending, their savings, their investing, and their sharing of that through their own giving to other causes over the cost, over the, over their lives. Awesome. We're being joined by Greg McCauley. He's the head of Merrill private wealth management. What are you hoping and expecting that these students take past their athletic life into, I don't want to say retirement, you think about retirement for a young person, it could be as young as 30 years old, but what do you want to come for them after that? You know, really the ability to make good financial decisions, right? And to have the knowledge and ability and the confidence to make those decisions across the course of their lives, it will change their lives and it potentially will change their children's lives. And so it becomes a generational process. And so that would be our hope is that through the education that we do, you know, it makes them better to be able to make good financial decisions that impact them and the next generation beyond them across, you know, across that population of people is like a major, will be a major change and a major impact for them and their heirs.

It's commendable what you're doing. We hear and have heard so many horror stories and documentaries and books about people and athletes who have generated massive amounts of wealth to have to, you know, sell baseball cards in the back end of a mall. What is the biggest misstep? Is it taxes?

Is it friends? How can, how can legends who've just accumulated so much wealth get back on track if anyway? Well, I think some of it is, it's a combination of things, right? So some of it is taxes, right? You know, as people at a young age get wealth, they have to realize the impact of taxes. They have to realize their ability to be able to spend the right way and to be able to save. And so if you're, if, if you don't realize how your wages are taxed and what you're spending is, it can end up like the situations that you just commented on where people end up in financial situations that they never dreamed possible given the wealth and their ability to earn more. That spending and that lack of savings compounds onto itself and causes problems.

Whereas if you, if you make good financial decisions, if you think about the need to put money away for taxes and the ability to save, it creates a completely different outcome over the course of one's life. Greg McCauley joining us from Merrill Private Wealth Management. He's ahead. Even wilder of a time when you think about the current space that we currently occupy in the summer, it's the Olympics. We see athletes who are becoming famous. They're going to get marketing deals and they have to understand how they manage that when they come back home, because, Hey, they may not have this earning opportunity ever again, or who knows for another four years.

That's right. And you think about that, think about how hard they've worked to get to the Olympics, the amount of like sacrifice, not only in terms of their time and their development, but it costs a lot of money to run an Olympic campaign in any sport. And so whatever funding they've been able to get, they've had to sacrifice a lot to get there. And so the opportunities that they may have post the Olympics, hopefully sets them up with the right financial education, to make the right set of decisions so that it changes the outcome of their lives and their family's lives. When you talk about the partnership that you guys have with IMG, where can people find out more information?

And dare I say, are there further programs or additions that we can find out about more in the future? Well, financial education, I think, has always been a hallmark of what Merrill Lynch has done and Bank of America has done throughout the history of our organization. And so, you know, we're really big believers in being able to help with financial education. The information for the students will be delivered to them on campus and some of their online programs. But I think that any student athlete today should start to think about the need to educate themselves and to be able to reach out to resources that they can find to be able to start to think about making good financial decisions and what that may mean.

But as you talked about earlier, the landscape is changing. And so I think that financial education will only grow as more opportunities become available for these student athletes, whether it be at IMG or anywhere. And it's important that people just become more educated as they have opportunities to do so. A financial literacy is a key for everybody.

Doesn't matter if you're making a buck or you're making one hundred million of them. It's very important. Hey, Greg, I appreciate the time. You have any last words to the audience, people listening all over the country? No, listen, J.R., thanks for having me on today. And again, I think it's the importance of that education over time that helps people change the course of their lives and the lives of their families, which is so important today.

So the more education people are able to get, the better off they're going to be in terms of their finances going forward. But thanks so much for having me. No doubt about it. Education always the key for everything.

It doesn't matter what it is in life. Thank you so much to Greg and for everything he's doing with Meryl and the partnership with IMG. It's the J.R. Sport Reshow here with you on the Infinity Sports Network. There's a lot going on in the world of sports. And right now, it is time for a newsflash. Here he is.

His name, Marco Balletti. Trying to figure out what to eat for dinner yet again? With Knorr Sides and Bullion as your not so secret ingredient, you can skip the drive-thru and do dinner at home. Knorr Taste Combos provide a menu of delicious, affordable and well-balanced meals that you can prepare in 30 minutes or less. Visit knorr.com to get quick and easy recipe ideas for your home-cooked weeknight dinners. It's not fast food, but it's so good.