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When the Canadian tennis player is not playing tennis, he’s reading about finance and economics. He shares his biggest money lessons.
Vasek Pospisil started playing tennis as a full-time job at the age of six and has been striving for excellence in all areas of his life ever since. He debuted at the Olympics, Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and, recently, the Tel Aviv Open, where he played against 21-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic in the quarter-finals. You can watch him compete in the Calgary National Bank Challenger for the second time this Sunday, November 6, 2022. Most days, Pospisil trains to keep up his impressive track record on the court, but when he’s off the court, he’s working toward his financial goals. No stranger to the ups and downs of investing, he still wouldn’t want to settle with just letting his earnings sit in savings. Here’s what he has to say about his money philosophy, and how he found the guts to seize the opportunities that come his way.
I have several. I really look up to Bill Ackman, and I know him on a personal level as well, so I’ve come to learn about his strategies. Someone who looks at money and the value of experiences in a completely different way is Bill Perkins—he wrote Die With Zero. I’ve been fortunate enough to be around some very smart people.
I love to spend time with friends and family. That’s how I charge my batteries. It’s cliché but underrated in terms of how to spend one’s free time.
I don’t think I’d be doing very many things differently, aside from spending more time with friends and family. I’m a very driven individual and, to some degree, I don’t even think of my tennis career or other personal projects as a way to make money. I just really enjoy the entrepreneurial aspect of what my life has become in the last few years.
My earliest money memory is when my cousin got me a $10 gift card to the corner store that she hand wrote for me. I was maybe seven or eight years old. I would always go and buy $0.25 candies, and when they would deduct that from the total balance, I would watch the numbers go down. That was the first time I had credit in my hands.
It was an Apple laptop for personal use. I was 17 years old at the time.
My first job was as a tennis player, at an extremely young age, but it wasn’t the first time I made money. I painted fences for my uncle who had a property in Vernon, B.C. I spent the money I earned on Christmas presents and saved the rest.
Two years ago I invested in a private startup company that had plans to go public at the time. I usually like to do my due diligence, but I kind of jumped into that one based on a close friend’s recommendation. Turns out, it was pretty much going under because the CEO of the company blew all the money from investors. This taught me that you have to invest in, not only the idea, but also in the people behind it.
I met someone on a vacation once who was traveling around the world with his wife. He recently sold his business and then went into real estate, managing multi-family apartment buildings. His advice to me was to go into real estate investing.
If you get a paycheque, you should just put it in your savings account and let it sit there. Or, that you should work with the goal to just save money. You obviously have to save some of that money, but then you should invest the remainder. I think that’s how you can grow your wealth.
I would definitely rather receive a large sum of money up front, because you can just do so much more with it. You can have financial advisors or investment advisors guide you the right way so that you will have a lot more in your bank account in 10 years than you would by receiving smaller amounts regularly. I lean on financial advisors sometimes myself.
That you can just save money and not do anything with it to grow your wealth. In times of inflation, that’s not going to do you any favours. On the flip side, investing in high-risk stocks can be dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing or don’t work with a financial advisor.
Back in 2007/2008, there was a big crash in the real estate market and prices fell, but I wasn’t in the financial position to take advantage of that. Then in 2013, I had the opportunity to invest in a multi-family apartment building, but I didn’t. I don’t really have any regrets in life, but I think the lesson there is that when you have an opportunity and you have enough information to show that it’s the right decision to make, you need to have the guts to act. I learned from that, and I no longer hesitate when opportunities like that come my way.
Anything that has a return, whether monetary or emotional, is something that has “value.” Bill Perkins talks a lot about the value of experiences and spending money on things you want to do—whether it’s a concert, visiting another country or just taking a break. These can all be valuable experiences.
I bought my apartment in Florida in my early 20s. I was training there in the off-season. It was the first time I had owned any real estate or anything of real value. I renovated it after making some money on tour at the time.
As long as you can get a return on your investment, such as by taking on debt to buy a rental property that pays the mortgage and all the bills, then debt can be very powerful. It can also be dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing, which is why it is important to lean on people who know what they’re doing and can advise you on how to use debt in smart ways.
My most recent splurge was a trip to Vegas with my friend for a weekend. It was an amazing time and we made some unforgettable memories.
Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. I think it caused a paradigm shift in how people look at spending money and how we perceive what value is. He really breaks down how to have a balanced and fulfilling life, rather than just stressing the importance of working and saving up until your 60s or 70s so that you can only enjoy your life after you retire.
My credit card and ID. I actually spent a month in Europe without spending any cash.
My necklace I got from my parents for my 18th birthday. I never take it off—unless I am getting a massage or physiotherapy.
I would like to get to the stage of life—in my mind, it’s at 40 years old—where I don’t have to worry about what something might cost.
Own.
Buy, most of the time. Although, given the current economic environment, it might be smarter in some cases to wait it out and lease.
Invest.
Budget. You have to have a plan—you can’t be careless with the decisions you are making. With investing in particular you have to make sure you have some level of security so that if things go wrong you are covered in terms of the impact on your life.
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