Have you ever wondered how Rafael Nadal or Peyton Manning got to the pinnacle of their sports? Is it just pure talent or a lot of hard work? It’s actually a combination of both. They worked and trained tirelessly to develop their skills and set themselves apart from their peers in their sports.
 

So what do these athletes have to do with money besides having a boatload of it? What can we learn from their success? We can apply the success factors that they used to train and improve their athletic skills to improve our money skills. When we apply their success factors to manage our money, we’ll be on our way to achieve any financial goals that we set for ourselves.

Discipline

Let’s start with their discipline, shall we? Discipline is one of the most important success factors that are difficult to be duplicated by their peers. Nadal plays every point in a game like it’s the last point he’ll play in every tennis match no matter what. Peyton Manning would spend hours in the film room to dissect and break down his opponent’s weaknesses and try to exploit them during an NFL game. What’s really amazing about their discipline is that they spent the same amount of time and effort to prepare themselves for every opponent.
 

When it comes to our money skills, we can apply the same discipline no matter if it’s our debts, savings, spendings or investments. For each area of our finance, we need to put ourselves in the best position to succeed. Don’t let debt cripple or dictate our finances. Maximizing our savings by taking advantage of free money when we save. Invest in index ETF and stop trying to time the market. Most important of all, have a strategy to tackle each of these areas.

Knowledge

Elite athletes not only use their knowledge of the game to give themselves an advantage, they also use knowledge about themselves to push their skills to the next level. No athlete is perfect. Each will have a weakness somewhere.
 

During the early part of Nadal’s career, he was having trouble dealing with the faster hard courts and had a very mediocre first serve. However, he used this knowledge to improved his serves and stepped in closer to the court to return his opponents’ serves. By using this knowledge, he turned his weaknesses into strengths. It helped him win three U.S. and One Australian Open Championships.
 

If you are having trouble with overspending or lacking the knowledge to invest your money, then turn those weaknesses into strengths. Develop a budget to ensure that you will only spend the money that you have earned. Afterward, start spending less than what you earned and save the rest. As for investing, it’s not as hard or as scary as you may think. It’s just as easy as investing in index ETFs. No CFA or finance degree required.

Setbacks Are Challenges

From time to time, athletes will suffer setbacks – even during the peak of their careers. For Nadal, he suffered multiple knee injuries during his career. After each injury, he came back even stronger and better than before. With the latest setback during 2017, he came back from the injury, won two Grand Slam tournaments and ended the year as the number one player on the ATP tour.
 

For Peyton Manning, he suffered a neck injury that almost ended his football career. With hard work and determination, he came back to the NFL with a new team and won a Superbowl. Along the way, he set multiple NFL records, won his fifth MVP award and directed the highest scoring offense in NFL history.
 

Sometimes, regular people like us have setbacks too. We may get laid off from our job or made a couple of bad financial decisions here and there. The important thing to remember is that every setback is an opportunity to challenge ourselves to do better. Things may not look very rosy at first, but once we overcome our financial challenges, we will be financially stronger and more stable than before.

Continuous Improvement

The success factor that I am most impressed with Nadal and Manning are their ability to continuously improve. Even when they had already achieved the highest results in their sports, ranking number one in the world for Nadal and winning the Superbowl for Manning, they still try to find ways to improve their skills. This speaks volumes about their commitment to challenge and improve themselves.
 

For us to keep our finances in tip-top shape, we can strive to continuously improve our finances and try to do one better than what we are currently doing right now. We can always try to save an extra $100 or spend $100 less per month. On the other hand, we can also read a personal finance book a month or listening to one podcast a week and just read a couple of blog posts a week to improve our financial knowledge.

Keep Your Eyes On The Prize

For many athletes, the top prize is always to reach the pinnacle of their sports. Either become the top-ranked player or win the ultimate championship in their sport. For Nadal and Manning, they had always had their eyes on the prize year after year. They are relentless and will continue to challenge themselves until they have reached their ultimate goal.
 

For us personal finance enthusiasts, I believe the ultimate prize is the achievement of Financial Independence (FI). Until we have reached this financial independence state, we should always keep our eyes on this prize and try to improve our finance day by day. If we keep on working towards this goal we can definitely achieve it one day.

My Two Cents

Most of us may never become elite athletes in our lifetime. However, if we use the success factors that helped these elite athletes reach the pinnacle of their sports and apply it to our money skills, we can achieve elite personal finance statuses. Money skills can be obtained and financial success can be achieved if we strive to improve our finances on a regular basis.
 

So readers, which of these success factors from these elite athletes can you apply to achieve financial success? If you have already achieved financial success, what are your success factors?