LeBron James Opens Up About His Childhood And Learning Crucial Money Lesson

If you are interested in numbers and finances, you probably know that LeBron James is the highest-paid player in the NBA. According to Forbes, LeBron’s earnings total $88.7 million for the 2018-19. However, the king of basketball wasn’t always this wealthy. Before becoming this successful, LeBron was a kid whose mom struggled to make ends meet. They moved a lot, and used food stamps to survive.

LeBron grew up with so little, and he “had no idea what a pantry was” until he was 15.

“Everything: chips, cereal, bread. All on top of the refrigerator,” he said.

But, he got a few lessons from his uncles.

“My uncles always taught me — they taught me how to have a savings account,” James told Carter in a separate conversation on UNINTERRUPTED. “They’d give me a dollar and they’d be like, ‘Listen, nephew, go spend 35 cents of it and keep the other 65.’ Or, if they gave me two dollars, they’d be like, ‘Go ahead and spend a dollar of it, but stash the other dollar.'”

 “I’m always in my head about stashing and keeping my money sacred … because I didn’t know when my uncle was going to give me another dollar here and another 50 cents here.”

LeBron may be earning millions today, but he still plays safe. The only thing he spends too much money on is his car collection.

“That’s the one thing that I love. I love cars,” he said.

LeBron still remembers his childhood and the way he grew up.

“Everything I do comes from my childhood, from my growing up, and what I feel was part of my success,” he said in one of his interviews. “A bicycle, for me, was the only way to get around the city. If I wanted to meet some of my friends, travel across the city, go to school, play basketball—anything—the bicycle was the way I got around.

“Me and my friends, when we got on our bikes, we would just ride. Sometimes we would even get lost because we’d be gone for so long. But there was a sense of joy and comfort. There was nothing that really could stop us. We felt like we were on top of the world. It was a way of life. If you had a bike, it was a way to kind of let go and be free.

“I used to love those Mongoose bikes with the pegs on the back, and people used to ride [the pegs.] I loved those. And then a 10-speed that came out by Huffy—I remember that, being able to start changing gears. There were a lot of hills we used to ride [in Akron]—especially one hill called North Hill. It was a massive hill, and if you didn’t have any gears, it was going to take you a long time.”