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Michael Vick Never Sees Most Of The Money He Makes

In July of 2008, as he sat rotting in the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, Michael Vick’s life was unraveling. And it wasn’t just because he was in jail on dogfighting charges: Vick’s money situation was a mess.

The financial nightmare Vick was in at the time is too scary to properly detail here — ESPN’s Lester Munson does a good job of breaking it down if you want to know more — but, basically, after years of bad advice, bad investments, and supporting too many people, Vick had reached his endpoint. He went broke while he sat in prison, and filed for Chapter 11.

Since filing for bankruptcy, Vick has earned roughly $31 million — remember, the Eagles signed him to a 6-year, $100 million contract in 2011, and he’s had a few endorsement deals since then — but he’s never seen 29.6 million of those dollars.

TMZ, which looked at legal documents from Vick’s bankruptcy case, breaks it down thusly:

The math is pretty simple — Vick had to pay a total of $29.6 mil — of that, $10.9 went to taxes, $9.2 mil went to creditors, $2.7 went to lawyers and accountants, and the rest is for various things, including child support and living expenses.

All told, Vick’s only seen $1.5 million of his $31 million income. According to this pay schedule, he won’t pay off his creditors until some time in 2014. So Eagles fans: next time you want to jump on his back for being an occasionally excellent, often maddening turnover machine, just remember that he’s not actually taking home 95% of his paycheck.

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