CHICAGO— Lindblom Math & Science Academy, along with three dozen other Chicago schools, received financial advice from former NFL player Akbar Gbaja-Biamila at Soldier Field on Saturday.
Magnetar Youth Investment Academy is a program offered in 35 Chicago high schools, and 300 participating students formed 33 teams for the Third Annual Magnetar Academy Team Challenge, a financial literacy and portfolio management competition.
Each team had a $100,000 mock stock portfolio that was built over three cycles. If teams performed well during the financial literacy quiz, they had the chance to add $10,000 to their portfolios during each round.
They were asked questions like “Why is it important to have a strong FICO score?” and “What doesn’t an employer deduct from a paycheck?”
After the second cycle, Gbaja-Biamila shared his personal struggle with managing his money and how he overcame it. The former NFL linebacker played for the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders. Currently, he is a co-host for "American Ninja Warrior" reality TV series and an analyst for the NFL Network’s "Fantasy Live."
He might have his finances together now, but it wasn’t always that way, he said.
“I got my scholarship checks, and I wanted to buy clothes,” Gbaja-Biamila said about his time in college at San Diego State University. “I wanted to do all these different things so I could fulfill a certain need to feel a little better about myself,” he said.
Moving on to the NFL was no different.
“In my short career in the NFL, I made $1.25 million. That was a lot of money for me, a young kid coming out of San Diego State, and I looked and said, ‘Wow, what happened to it?”
The challenge gave students the chance to earn grants for their schools. CICS Northtown Academy left as the winner Saturday, earning the school a $5,000 grant.
“It was the best experience because we didn’t expect [to win],” said Selena Melendez, 17, a junior at CICS from Irving Park.
The Lindblom team came in second place, earning the school $2,500.
“It feels so good because I didn’t expect us to go this far,” said Ifetayo Maloney, a 14-year-old freshman from Morgan Park.
Participating in the Magnetar Academy at her school has already helped change the way she thinks about managing her finances, Ifetayo said.
“I’ve really been able to save my money, I know what I’m doing with it, and I have become more responsible with it,” Ifetayo said.
Hubbard High School took home third place, with a $1,500 school grant.
Gbaja-Biamila said that he wanted to share his story with the teenagers because he believed that many of them could relate. Before launching his NFL career, he grew up in South Los Angeles, where he was one of seven children born to first-generation Nigerian immigrants.
“I feel like I have a lot of the same issues that other people have,” he said. “We have these misconceptions growing up that being from a certain part of the world means that you’re not going to be anything or that you’re only limited to so much,” Gbaja-Biamila said, who added that sports is not the “only way out.”
He said that he wants students to understand the importance of budgeting and investing their money, instead of impulse buying. He admitted that he bought a lot of extravagant things early in his career like custom suits, diamond earrings and luxury cars because he felt the need to show that he had “made it.”
Now, he said, he follows a spending plan and encourages youth to do the same.
Magnetar’s executive director, Nyasha Nyamapfene said that the organization selected Gbaja-Biamila because he models what they teach in their curriculum during the academic year— “anticipating risks, planning for success, thinking forward, understanding things may go wrong or change, and you need to be prepared.”
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“So many of our young people look up to athletes and in the curriculum the students learn about how over 75 percent of professional athletes go bankrupt five years after they leave the league,” Nyamapfene said.
“We really wanted someone to whom the students can relate and who had a story, who came from the same place that they came from, a similar environment,” she said.
“I think he was great, he was really influential especially in saying it’s never too late to start saving,” Melendez said.
