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Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk was barely a teen when he started making six figures as a pro competitor. As most kids would, Hawk blew through his $160,000 annual salary on leisure — fun outings for his friends, the latest skateboarding items, and cutting-edge tech toys, including an at-home tanning bed.
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“That was the most ridiculous purchase,” Hawk said on SoFi’s Richer Lives podcast. “I live in Southern California. Why am I buying a tanning bed?”
Amid Hawk’s spending spree, his father advised him to purchase a home. Although Hawk, then 17, saw the home as the ultimate symbol of freedom and an adult-free place to host parties, it would become his saving grace when his skateboarding income dried up in the early 90s. The star skater survived on $5 Taco Bell meals in an attempt to save money and maintain his dream home, which he bought a few years after his first.
“That first property I bought was my saving grace because I ended up buying another property and getting underwater with my expenses. I had a big ramp set up there. That was the dream, but I just really was in over my head,” he said. “I took out a second mortgage on the house to start a skateboard company of all things, and then ended up selling the house for what I owed. I moved back into the house I bought when I was in high school with a new family because my son was born at that time.”
“That’s when I really started cutting back on all expenses,” he added. “It was definitely Taco Bell, Top Ramen, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
Hawk said he began taking on multiple gigs to keep his family afloat, including editing videos for skateboarding companies, designing ramps and consulting for movies and commercials. Although he hadn’t lost his skateboarding skills, Hawk said he was considered “too old” to perform, although he was in his mid-20s.
“In the early 90s especially, skating was considered just a youth sport. So if you’re over the age of 18, you’re too old,” he said. “I was 24. I was way past what they thought was a prime or even allowable to be a pro skater. My name was on the radar of some Hollywood studios because I had done other work. But that’s what I had to do. It wasn’t like I was bitter. I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’m getting paid. I’m still doing this.’”
Hawk said his time out of the spotlight taught him to be more financially responsible and focus on savings, just in case consulting work stopped as well.
“I think the baseline was ‘Don’t live beyond your means.’ I thought that I wasn’t. I just kept kind of being in denial that, ‘Oh, I’m not making as much as I’m spending,’” he said. “And then at some point, I definitely was not making as much as I was spending and I still had all these expenses. Back then, I had a water bill that I had to go make payments on it. That’s when things got really tricky and a little scary.”
“It was a wake-up call,” he said. “You should always be living so that you know you have savings.”
Thankfully, Hawk’s star reignited in 1999 after he landed a history-making score of 900 at the X Games and launched the first-ever Pro Skater game on PlayStation. Since then, Hawk has maintained his status as a skateboarding, pop culture and philanthropic icon. He will be headlining Inman Connect San Diego in August.
“It wasn’t like I was preparing for my next comeback. I didn’t know it was going to happen,” he said. “So when it did come back, I was fully prepared to live in a very responsible way.”