Sports Lawyer Might Make a Run for Home

A year ago, attorney Chris Petrovic felt as if he were living paycheck to paycheck. Although he earned a solid salary--about $60,000 annually--and his fixed expenses were manageable, he was finding it difficult to save much beyond the $200 a month going into his 401(k).

How could that be?

He thought he knew where his money was going. After all, he kept scrupulous records of his expenditures.

Except, that is, for the restaurant meals and entertainment he financed by frequent trips to the automated teller machine.

“For many people,” Los Alamitos financial planner Delia Fernandez told him, “ATM withdrawals can be the black hole in their budget.” And so it was with Petrovic.

One of Petrovic’s goals was to save enough within two years for a down payment on a house near the beach, whether or not he would actually buy one.

Fernandez offered other money-saving tips, among them recommending that he put future pay increases into savings rather than succumb to the temptation to allow his lifestyle to flourish with his earnings.

Petrovic, 29, put Fernandez’s advice to work over the last year, with the result that his “down payment” fund has grown from $3,000 to $15,000. As Fernandez advised, he put $5,000 into a money market fund as an emergency account, and he has put $5,000 into the bond fund--Strong Advantage (three-year average annual return: 5.9%)--she suggested. Fernandez had explained that putting money for a near-term goal into an equity fund would be risky, but Petrovic decided he wanted stock market exposure, so the rest of the savings have gone into Strong Schafer Value (three-year average annual return: 13.3%), a growth-and-income fund that invests in large and mid-cap companies.

To boost his savings, Petrovic did indeed curtail the ATM visits. Then, this fall, he cut $167 a month from his rent when he moved from Manhattan Beach to Huntington Beach after taking a new job. The new position, with a small Irvine law firm that represents minor-league baseball teams, pays about $2,000 more a month than his previous job. With that, Petrovic--who played briefly in the minors himself--has fulfilled his goal to practice sports law.

“Things are going well,” he said. “I really made a concerted effort to keep close track of [all] my expenses and save money.”

However, he’s an independent contractor now and thus no longer saving in a 401(k), so he’s investigating tax-advantaged retirement savings plans open to the self-employed.

Although Petrovic’s nest egg is growing, he’s still not sure he will be buying a nest of his own soon.

“The way the real estate market has been going up, it probably behooves me to buy a house,” he said. “But I’m not sure where I’ll be in a year or two, so I’m not sure if it makes sense to buy.”

Nevertheless, the down-payment goal has been a useful one, he said, giving him the incentive to focus on saving.