The Missing NIL Variable

Anyone who has spent time inside financial services knows that sudden wealth is complicated. The conversation around NIL — a form of sudden wealth — is no different.

Tax implications, cash flow timing, investment strategy, family dynamics, estate planning —all of it matters. But as someone who played professional baseball and now works as a financial coach, the NIL industry has largely overlooked individual differences, also known as personality. People are different and those differences matter, especially with money.

The biggest financial risk for a young athlete isn't a bad investment. It's not even a bad agent. It's a mismatch between their money plan and their money personality.

In other words, the financial plan fails not because the person is irresponsible — but because the plan was not tailor made for them.

In working with clients, including some athletes at various stages of their careers and earning trajectories, I’ve noticed a familiar pattern. Money arrives and the client is surrounded by an influx of opinions and ideas with no coherent structure. Many times, when people are overwhelmed with ideas and information, they tend to shut down. Think of it as the “paradox of choice.” As a result, the plan may fail from lack of execution, leaving all parties frustrated and disappointed. Not only does this newfound wealth create change and complexity in financial matters, it also may create sudden changes in family and social dynamics. Friends and family relationships that were once stable may start to fracture as new and previously unspoken expectations emerge. Who can be trusted and doesn’t “want” something from you? What was supposed to be an incredible blessing is now a burden. But what if there is a better way?

The Missing Variable

The path forward is to supplement the must have essentials — such as a cash flow plan, investment management, tax planning, and updated estate documents with measuring, understanding, and incorporating individual and family differences.

Few people realize that personality is measurable in a scientific way. The gold standard model of personality is called The Big Five Model — built on decades of academic research, published across millions—yes millions—of peer-reviewed studies. The Big Five Model, often referred to as OCEAN, quantifies how a person comes from the factory using five factors: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. These measurements can provide clues as to how a person processes and relates to their money and makes financial decisions.

Understanding an athlete's personality profile isn't therapy. It's simply a practical scientific thing to do before giving a person any type of advice, including financial advice.

Your Money Personality Has Three Layers

When I talk to clients about money personality, I'm referring to a combination of three things:

• Personality Traits — your core, durable wiring. These traits are stable over your lifetime. They can shape how you naturally respond to market drops, saving vs. spending, and worry about money.

  
  

• Money Experience — the memories and formative moments that shaped how you first learned to think about money. Whether you grew up watching your parents fight about money, save obsessively, or spend freely — those experiences become the baseline that your brain often returns to under pressure.

  
  

• Money Narrative — the story you tell yourself about money. Whether you see yourself as someone who is good with money or bad with money. Whether wealth feels like protection or guilt. Whether spending feels like freedom or recklessness.

  
  

All three matter. In this section, I'm focusing on the first layer — Personality Traits. Again, traits are measurable and seldomly a part of any sudden wealth financial conversation.

Introducing OCEAN

The Big Five personality model is organized using the acronym OCEAN:

Openness — your appetite for novelty, ideas, and new experiences.

Conscientiousness — your capacity for discipline, structure, and follow-through.

Extraversion — your energy, assertiveness, and social orientation.

Agreeableness — your tendency toward cooperation, trust, and generosity.

Neuroticism — your sensitivity to stress, anxiety, and emotional volatility.

Each trait exists on a spectrum. There is no ideal profile; all personalities have their strengths and weaknesses. But each combination creates a distinct profile that comes with its own strengths, blind spots, and risks that emerge when money enters the picture.

While The Big Five gives insight into behavior, Wealth Science designed and built a proprietary assessment — FinPrint ™— that measures these same traits specifically for financial behavior. FinPrint™ is the foundation of how we build financial plans for all new clients, including current and former athletes.

In this series, I'll walk through each OCEAN trait in isolation and how it may inform coaches and advisors on how someone will earn, spend, invest, and ultimately build — or lose — financial momentum.

- Connor Jones, CFP®

Connor Jones is a former professional baseball player and financial planner at Wealth Science Advisors in Alpharetta.

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