Many athletes who take center stage during the Olympic Games are working turn their new fame into revenue through endorsements and sponsorship deals. But one former athlete pursued a different path to financial success after her Olympic career.
Lauryn Williams is one of only six people to medal at both the winter and summer Olympics. She won silver in the 100m sprint at the 2004 games and gold in the 4x100m relay during the 2012 Olympics. She also won a silver medal in bobsled at the 2014 Winter Games.
After she retired, Williams traded a lucrative sponsorship deal to pursue a career as a financial adviser. Now she's a certified financial planner.
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"The thing that I think started all out, was understanding that I was a finance major that became an athlete who wanted to use their finance degree but didn't really know exactly what to do," Williams told Scripps News in an interview. "So literally a Google search led me to the CFP coursework. And I enrolled in it just to kind of teach myself stuff about money after working with financial advisors that didn't really work out, didn't have the CFP."
"I wanted to help other athletes organize their finances in the same way that I didn't know how to organize mine initially," Williams said.
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"There's a large group of financial planners that focus on people that are getting close to retirement, because they've already amassed their wealth, and they're ready to use what they've invested to be able to live out a nice retirement time. But what about millennials? We are now having kids. We have little ones. We're in our high earning years and no one taught us anything about money," Williams said.
Watch the full interview with Williams above.
