With the Super Bowl a week away, you’ll be reading a lot about the skillsets of members of the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers. But a member of last season’s Detroit Lions has been in the news since the pre-season for something he’s achieved off the field.

There are a lot of professional athletes featured in news stories and documentaries because they’ve squandered — or been bilked out of — millions of dollars. But Ryan Broyles is not one of them. So far he has played in the NFL for three years, but regardless of how many more years he plays, he is living a lifestyle that will keep him wealthy for the rest of his life.

Broyles, who was a wide receiver for the Lions between 2012 and 2014, spoke with MarketWatch about his spending habits, his work ethic and the importance of keeping a budget. At one point, while talking about the specifics of his budget, he said he wanted to make it clear that what he does works for him, but that he understands everyone’s situation is different. “I’m not Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman,” he said.

But after he described his budget in detail and shared his philosophy on spending and investing, I’m not so sure he couldn’t host a personal finance call-in show himself. He would just be a younger and much stronger version of Ramsey and Orman.

The 27-year-old Broyles made over $2 million from the Lions between 2012 and now. But he keeps to a budget of $5,000 a month in total spending. Of course, that’s a lot of income for most people, but spending less than you earn, if you’re able to, is smart in any income bracket.

He said some of his friends ask him why he doesn’t have flashy things, like a Porsche. But he tells them he’ll have such things one day, and he won’t even have to be working when he buys them.

“I want to invest and I want the investments to provide so I’m financially free,” he told me.

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When he was a child in Oklahoma, his parents didn’t have a lot of extra money, but he said they taught him a strong work ethic. He mowed lawns when he was 8 years old to earn money to go on team basketball trips. In high school, he worked at an Albertson’s grocery store as a bag boy and worked as a referee for kids’ sports leagues. “I’ve always worked for my money, and seen it as something I needed to cherish and not take for granted,” he said.

Broyles played four seasons for the University of Oklahoma, and was the NCAA’s all-time leader in receptions when he left for the NFL. He was drafted in the second round by the Detroit Lions, and received a signing bonus of $1.15 million. His salary in 2012 was $390,000. It was $557,000 in 2013, $570,000 in 2014 and would have been $600,000 this year, but before the first game of the season he asked to be released from the team so he could try to play for a team on which he’d play a larger role. Before leaving the Lions, they paid him a $50,000 workout bonus and a $181,614 reporting bonus that his agent had negotiated for him.

Broyles has had some bad luck with injuries so far in his career. He entered the NFL with a torn ACL in his left knee — an injury from a college game, then tore the ACL in his right knee during his rookie year. He then ruptured the Achilles tendon in his left leg in 2013. He is healthy now and working out and staying fit as he awaits word from his agent about which teams are in the market for a wide receiver.

At his rookie symposium, where the NFL prepares recently drafted players for the life of a professional athlete, he and his fellow players were told about the high number of athletes who eventually go bankrupt. He said a lot of players in the room were thinking about playing football, as he was, but he was also thinking about how to make his signing bonus last.

He said his situation was a little different from other players because of the ACL injury he sustained in college. “A switch went off in my head: An injury can end my career. That triggered me to think about life after football,” he said.

As early as the rookie symposium, he was trying to figure out how long he could live on the income he had.

His budget

His goal is to spend $60,000 a year, so his monthly budget is $5,000. The budget, which he says is after-tax money — meaning it’s $60,000 in take-home pay — is allocated like this: 50% on fixed expenses like mortgage and car payments; 30% on variable expenses like food and gas; 20% toward savings.

He read that a mortgage should be 28% or less of income, so his is $1,600 — about 30% of the $60,000 budget.

He keeps track of his spending on a piece of paper, and has also started using the budgeting website Mint.com this year. “I love it,” he said.

Here are some specifics of his monthly budget:

Groceries: $500

Gas: $300

Phone bill: $190 each for his cellphone and his wife’s.

Car payments: $800 total for 2 cars — a Mazda 3 for him, and a Cadillac SRX for his wife.

He also has a Trailblazer that’s fully paid for. Add in insurance and a few other expenses, and he’s at a little over $4,000, which gives him some wiggle room in keeping his spending under $5,000 a month.

Ways he saves money

He and his wife, who have a 3-month-old son, live in a house they had built in Dallas in 2014.

After talking with Broyles for over an hour, it was clear that he and his wife make conscious choices about how they spend.

They eat out at restaurants just once or so a week.

They don’t have cable TV in their home; they use Apple TV and watch a lot of Netflix.

He bought his Mac computer with points from one of his credit cards.

He pays his credit cards off every month.

And they use cloth diapers for their son. “My wife wanted to use cloth diapers. They’re washable. And they have cool designs. They have stars and trucks on them. It’s like he has his own little outfits. He’s looking good,” Broyles said. When I asked him why they use cloth, he laughed and said, “it’s cheaper.”

He also doesn’t hire movers. He has moved four times and has driven a U-Haul truck each time. When he moved from Michigan to Dallas last year, he and his wife drove the 16 hours with all of their belongings in the truck. He said they did it themselves because the U-Haul cost $500 and movers would have cost about $3,000. “There were times when we were in the U-Haul with our dog, and I thought, ‘this is not the best situation.’ But we made it work,” he said.

It was clear after we spoke for a while that his wife is a big part of the reason they are so smart with their money.

“Sometimes I think, ‘let’s just pay full price for something,’ but my wife talks me into finding a deal,” he said. While they were in college together in Oklahoma, she worked and helped the couple make money. “She’s always: let’s save, let’s be smart,” he said. And he said her grandfather, who was a political-science professor at the University of Oklahoma, has been a positive influence, too. “He dabbles in the stock market, and I talk to her grandpa all the time,” Broyles said.

One place the Broyles like to splurge is on vacations and experiences. He said their favorite trip was to China last February. They’ve also been to Europe and the Caribbean, but loved how different the culture was in China. They keep a list of places they want to go next, including Fiji, Jerusalem, Greece, and the Ivory Coast.

But even when they splurge, they find a deal first. They used a Groupon to go to China, for example.

His influences

In addition to his family members, Broyles says he has had other positive influences on his relationship to money.

He considers one of his teachers in high school to be a mentor. When he was in high school, she asked him to work at the YMCA for a special needs summer camp. “We worked together and she blew me away. We talked about finances and budgeting and investing. She influenced how I think today. And we still talk,” he said.

His investments

He said of his whole net worth, 40% is in the stock market. It’s in all stocks and no bonds, but he said some of the investors he follows are predicting a recession in 2016, so he is considering putting more of his money into bonds. He has 40% of his money in real-estate investments, and the remaining 20% is in cash.

“Agents and advisers come after you” when you’re a top collegiate athlete, he said. “I interviewed four or five guys and knew the type of investor I wanted to be and adviser I wanted to work with.” He ended up choosing a financial adviser that represented other NFL players he knew. He said initially he was ultra conservative, but his adviser coached him. “As I got more comfortable, I understood P/E ratios and things like that. Stocks and real estate are what I’m into.”

Toward the end of our talk, I mentioned how much I pay in rent to live in New York City. He was shocked and said I needed to read the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” He talked about the wisdom of owning versus renting and said it’s a myth that people have to put 20% down to buy a home. He talked about credit scores and FHA loans and started doing some calculations on a piece of paper and told me how much I’ve spent on rent over the years and how much that money would be worth if it had been in the stock market.

“The American dream is alive. Wages have not grown as in the past, but get into the game sooner than later,” he said.

Then he apologized for giving so much advice. But I said not to, and that everything he said made sense.

Immediately after we ended the interview, he texted me.

“Really, pick up the book ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad.’ It’s good stuff.”

This story has been updated.