NIL growth calculator
Four years of earning. Decades of owning.
Put in what you're earning and see where it puts you at 35 — the same age this site uses to compare you against doctors, executives, and former pros. The contributions stop when your eligibility does. The growth doesn't.
Your numbers
Tax assumptions
Social Security 12.40%, Medicare 2.90%, Additional Medicare 0.90% above $200,000. Wage base $184,500. Self-employment income multiplied by 92.35% per IRS Schedule SE.
Hypothetical portfolio value by age
Hypothetical value at age 35
$2.64M
Based on $250,000 a year invested at ages 20 through 23, plus the estimated tax savings below, at an assumed 7% annual return — 15 years from now, not fifty.
You contributed $1,056,856. Everything above that is growth — and it keeps compounding well past 35.
Hypothetical illustration based on the figures you entered and a constant assumed rate of return. Not a projection, a guarantee, or the actual result of any client. Assumes no withdrawals, advisory fees, investment expenses, or taxes on gains — each of which would reduce this figure. Actual returns vary year to year and may be negative. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal.
The part most athletes are never told
$14,214
Estimated payroll tax you could keep each year, at the income you entered.
NIL money is self-employment income, and it carries a tax most athletes don't know applies to them until it already has. There is a legitimate way to structure around part of it. Your CPA is the one who sets it up — and the specifics are a conversation, not a web page.
Kept and invested at your assumed rate rather than paid out, that amount alone is $142K by 35.
Estimate of federal payroll tax only, calculated from the income you entered under the assumptions shown in the calculator. Excludes federal and state income tax, state and local entity taxes, and your individual circumstances. Whether any of this applies to you depends on facts this page doesn't know. Not tax advice.
Who does what
Worth stating plainly, because plenty of people in this space don't.
- Ballast Capital AdvisorsInvests and manages the money once it's yours to keep. Does not do tax work.
- MHCSThe tax side. A licensed CPA firm that sets up the structure, handles the filings, and decides what you actually keep. Use them or bring your own.
Neither Arete Project nor Ballast Capital Advisors LLC prepares tax returns, files entity elections, or provides tax or legal advice.
Same money, two endings
Spending it doesn't cost what you spent.
Spent as it arrives
$0
Cars, housing upgrades, the group chat. The income spike treated as the new normal. Nothing left generating anything by the time the eligibility runs out.
Invested and left alone — at 45
$5.20M
The same dollars, moved once, then left alone until 45. Most of that figure is growth, not what you put in.
Spending $250,000 at twenty doesn't cost you $250,000. It costs you what that money would have become.
Both columns are simplified illustrations, not case studies of real people. The comparison assumes one path invests the full amount and never withdraws, and the other retains none of it. Real outcomes fall between these and depend on individual circumstances.
Your move
The number on this page only happens if someone actually does it.
Every figure here assumes the money gets invested and then left alone for decades. That second part is the hard one. Tell us where you are and we'll set up a conversation — the structure, the plan, and what to do with the first check. No pitch.