Shaq Says He’ll Get $1 Million A Month At 55 — The Annuity Play Behind It
Shaquille O’Neal just broke down the money play that made him bulletproof — and the number at the end of it is stupid. Sitting down on the Dinner Party roundtable, Shaq revealed he expects his annuities to pay him around $1 million a month once he turns 55.
It started with a rich man Shaq used to see coming up. “I would always see this filthy rich guy. I’m talking rich — Four Seasons, Rolls-Royce,” Shaq said. “I asked him, I was like, ‘How do you stay rich?'”
The answer became Shaq’s whole financial religion: “He said, ‘Shaq, if you have $100, you want to save $50. But if you want to be wealthy, you play with $25 and you save $75.'”
So Shaq started treating his endorsement checks like they didn’t exist. “After I heard him say that, I would start to get endorsement checks and not even turn them in. I had so much money coming in, I put a lot into annuities.”
Those annuities were his insurance policy against himself. “Next year I get a lot, almost for the rest of my life. So 55, 60, and 65. That was my failproof, just in case the investments don’t work and this and that,” he said. “I don’t like to brag, but I think at 55 I’ll probably get $1,000,000 a month.”
The math checks out on the calendar too — Shaq turns 55 in March 2027, so “next year” is right on schedule. And this isn’t a new sermon from the Big Fella: he made roughly $292 million in NBA salary alone and has been preaching the same two lessons for years — save 75, play with 25, and “learn this word: annuity.” While so many players from his era went broke after the checks stopped, Shaq built a machine that pays him whether he works or not.
The clip is doing numbers too — over 1.2 million views in less than a day. Because the lesson travels: it was never about how much you make. It’s about how much you keep.
Could you live on 25% and stack the other 75? Let us know in the comments.
Source: The Dinner Party podcast. Clip via @Jackkk on X. Additional reporting: Basketball Network.
