"So she wasn't really happy about that," Bueckers, now a WNBA star, told Fortune. "Then [name, image, and likeness] came into place, and then my mom [got] her credit card back."
"It happened super fast, and I really wasn't prepared for it," she said. "Building your wealth in college and starting to really understand finances is something that I didn't really know, and so I was kind of forced to know."
As a freshman at the University of Connecticut, Paige Bueckers exhausted her college stipend and borrowed her mother's credit card for food, clothes, and gas. A 2021 Supreme Court-backed policy change allowed student-athletes to profit from name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, and Bueckers soon signed multiyear partnerships with StockX and Gatorade, becoming the first college athlete with a Gatorade deal. The rapid financial shift moved her from not having a bank account five years earlier to an estimated $1.5 million net worth after the 2024-2025 NCAA season, and she entered the WNBA as the 2025 No. 1 draft pick earning a regular paycheck.
Read at Fortune
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