Green Bay Packers punter Tim Masthay was obsessed with saving money before he even had any. So much so that he slept in a utility closet in college because it reduced his rent to only $100 a month.

Tim and his wife Amanda recently attended the NFL’s Personal Finance Camp, which educates players on how to make their money last long after they stop playing.

“Personal finance acumen is important for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a high income or a low income earner or somewhere in between. If you’re old or young or single or married. It’s important for everyone.”

You would think one of the professors leading the classes at the camp said this, but Tim did, after being asked why he attended. Spouses of players were invited to the event, which was held between April 4 and April 7 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Meet the NFL player who lived in a utility closet in college to save money

When we asked the Masthays what they did with his first big NFL paycheck, they said a big chunk went toward the league’s 401(k) plan and another went into an education fund for their young children.

And when asked if he ever had to switch financial advisers like many athletes do because they’re not happy with the advice or returns they’re getting, Tim said he’s never had one. He invests his money himself in low-cost index funds.

And if you’re wondering how many credit cards they have. They have one.

Also see:What it’s like to take a finance class with a lot of NFL players

Tim, 29, met his wife Amanda while they were sophomores at the University of Kentucky. They married soon after graduating and have two children and a third on the way. They’re clearly a great team, but what made them so smart about money? Here’s what they shared with us.

What it’s like to make so much money while you’re in your 20s

Tim wasn’t drafted out of college but was signed — and released — by the Indianapolis Colts before the 2009 season started. He later signed with the Green Bay Packers and has had great success with them. He signed a five-year, $6 million contract in 2012 that included a $1.2 million signing bonus. And he won a Super Bowl with the Packers in 2011.

“ I almost fell on the floor when I saw his first paycheck. ” — Amanda Masthay

While Tim was trying to make an NFL roster, Amanda was working as a bank teller making $9 an hour. “That was all the money we had. So we went from getting by to the first paycheck that he got. I almost fell on the floor when I saw it. I had never seen that much money in my life,” Amanda said.

They were tempted to buy things when they got the check. “It took a lot of restraint and we sort of had to wrap our heads around it so that we didn’t buy some car that we really couldn’t afford,” she said.

Tim says that first paycheck was for $9,000, and that while it was a lot of money to him, too, it was at the league minimum. “There was this influx of money at a young age where we were accustomed to being on scholarship, but it wasn’t quite as traumatic as what some players who are top draft picks experience.”

The unique financial challenges of being an NFL player — and the wife of a player

When you start making a lot of money in the league, you have to figure out what to do with it, Tim said. “How do I spend it? How do I save it? How do I budget? How am I going to play? Because it’s very difficult to project how much you’re going to earn in an NFL career. It might be a one-year career, and it might be a five-year career.”

How the NFL keeps its players from going broke

He said another challenge is that they’re only paid during the season, except for a small off-season stipend. “We receive eight or nine paychecks throughout the year and you’ve got to do all of your budgeting and saving based off of those checks. It’s a little different way of being paid than I think most people are,” Tim said.

But he also acknowledged that “if you have some vision for the future, it’s a fantastic opportunity in terms of investment.”

How they got so smart about money

The Masthays said their educations at the University at Kentucky — he was an economics major and she was a marketing major — were helpful, and that lessons they learned at a young age were also influential.

“If we ever went on vacation as kids, I remember being 6 or 7 and my mom would give me a check register and I would do chores around the house and go wash people’s cars and save up for my spending money,” Amanda said.

Tim said that at Kentucky’s business school he took a class in his sophomore year — in which he met Amanda, incidentally — and the professor said if you can save $10,000 when you’re 20 years old and if the stock market were to return what it’s historically returned, you’d have $1 million when you were 60. “I remember thinking, wow that’s interesting,” he said.

That made him think of ways he could save some of his scholarship money, which was $750 a month. One way he did that was to live in a utility closet for $100 a month in a house that four of his friends lived in. He said it was just big enough to fit a bed.

“By the time I graduated I had saved $10,000 while living on a scholarship check. That’s what I bought her wedding ring with,” he said. (He spent part of it on the ring.)

Tim Masthay punting in a game against the Buffalo Bills on Dec. 14, 2014. Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images

One mistake?

Tim said one area they could have been smarter in is real estate. They bought a house in Kentucky for the off-season while also owning a home in Green Bay. They’ve since sold the Kentucky home but say they didn’t like owning a home they only used for part of the year.

Marriage and money

Amanda said one of the reasons she was interested in attending the Personal Finance Camp was to see what they could do to minimize financial stress during the season.

“Finance is one of the biggest elements of stress for most people, so if there’s something we can do that’s going to make something else a little bit easier, then why wouldn’t we want to learn about that and try to implement it in our lives?”

During the interview, Amanda and Tim were in agreement on most things and at times finished each other’s sentences. When we asked Tim what he thought helped him go from being waived by the Colts in 2009 to setting records with the Packers in 2011, Amanda said: “He married me.”