Tua Tagovailoa says he'll live on endorsement money, save $30 million rookie deal for later
It looks like Miami Dolphins first-rounder Tua Tagovailoa is going to have to be patient while waiting behind Ryan Fitzpatrick for his day as starting quarterback. It’s not the only area he’s exercising patience.
In an interview with GQ published Friday, the rookie walked through how he’s handling his finances now that he’s a multi-millionaire and revealed an interesting nugget about his spending.
Tua Tagovailoa’s prudent spending
From GQ:
I'm gonna be living off of my marketing money, so the endorsement money that I get, and then everything else is just put to the side. So the money that I'm making from my contract, that's put to the side, so none of that's gonna be seen. It's really me on the app, how much money I want to transfer every month into my savings, you know? And then I have a spending account, and at the end of every month, my financial advisors give me a breakdown on what I spent, how much I spent this month, and really that's all it is.
Tagovailoa isn’t touching a cent of his rookie deal with the Dolphins — valued at $30.3 million over four years by OverTheCap — and is instead living off the money he makes from endorsements. And everything he does spend is reviewed by his financial advisors on a monthly basis.
Right now, Tagovailoa is currently pulling in money from at least four different endorsement deals, as he announced partnerships with Adidas, Bose, Muscle Milk and Wingstop back in April.
That has allowed Tagovailoa to at least splurge on some things, including a $1.65 million house in Miami, an $80,000 Escalade for his mother and a $10,000 Rolex for his father, per ProFootballTalk.
Seems like a pretty good set-up, made possible by being a widely known quarterback that starred from his freshman year at a college football superpower.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this. Among the best-known examples is, oddly, Rob Gronkowski, who revealed in 2018 that he had still not spent any contract money from his years of playing. Just like Tagovailoa, Gronkowski was living on endorsement money while letting his $44 million in career income stay in the bank.
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