How did Cincinnati Bengals WR Ja’Marr Chase spend his first $1 million?

There are few things in the NFL that are as genuine and as heartwarming as the relationship between Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase. They have history together. Both of them had untapped greatness in them and saw it flourish under the same system at LSU. Both won the national championship and got to the Super Bowl as part of the same one-two combination. So to see that they are truly friends, that they actually like to spend time in each others’ company, is refreshing in this cynical world.

Back in February, the media was bent in two over the news of how Ja’Marr went down Joe Burrow’s street, door to door, knocking and asking if he could buy the house, just so he could live near the Bengals quarterback.

Now, in a GQ Sports video, Ja’Marr Chase has broken down how he spent his first million dollars, and he is candid about the whole story.

Growing up in Harvey, Louisiana, he had a childhood where a million dollars was about a million miles away. If you are unfamiliar with the geography of south Louisiana, Harvey is on the Westbank of the Mississippi river, just up from Gretna, where the GNO bridge (now rebranded the Crescent City Connection) crosses from downtown New Orleans to the primarily working class suburbs on the other side.

Chase spent his childhood between his home in Harvey and his grandmother’s home in Gretna, both nice places to live, but not as swanky as the Uptown mansions just across the river. He recalls that his first job was working on the sno-ball stand, a south Louisiana institution known elsewhere as snow cones, shaved ice, raspao, or any number of other names. “I was broke, man, I ain’t gonna lie. I ain’t had nothing.”

He admits that his first money, and most of the money he earned thereafter, was spent on shoes, listing a pair of Reebok Allen Iversons as his first expenditure.

Things are most definitely looking up for the young man these days, after he was picked fifth overall in the 2021 NFL draft, signing a four-year $30.8 million with a $19.8 million signing bonus.

He revealed that the very first thing that he did was to purchase a new car for his mother. She had an older car with no air conditioning, so her son picked her up a midnight black Maserati with red interior for $65k. “She was crying tears of joy, so she made me start crying.”

Of course, nobody could blame a young man who has just hit it big for splurging on himself. It might be a lot less money than you would think, though, with Chase spending only $50k on jewelry and the same again on clothes. With only $1000 spent on tattoos, his budget for swag is impressively low-key.

He gifted $15k to each of his siblings, just so they could have a little something extra. He says that he didn’t want to give too much, so that they wouldn’t go crazy with spending it, but felt that $15k each was the right amount.

His big outlay was heartwarming: he paid off his mother’s house. “Paid the house off, so that’s officially her house.” He spent about $100k on that but notes that it was a place that his mother had put a lot of herself into and “it was something that I wanted to do.”

With another splurge on a Rolls-Royce for $300k (well, wouldn’t you if you could?) and a few incidentals like rookie dinners with the team, his total outlay came to just around $600k. And the rest? He did something novel, something that shows his maturity beyond his years. He saved it.

“Saving your money is way better than spending it. You don’t know how much you’re losing when you’re spending it.” Hear, hear. It sounds like Ja’Marr and Joe have something in common here, with Burrow claiming that he intended to live exclusively off of his endorsement money and save all of his NFL salary. Maybe this next generation of NFL players won’t have to go through the same troubles that previous ones did. Let’s hope so. If anyone deserves a happy ever after, it is Ja’Marr Chase.