According to Tennis Channel, Serena Williams is the greatest female tennis player of all time with 23 Grand Slam titles.

To achieve this success, Williams said that in the early stages of her career, she only cared about winning and did not care about the prize money, which made her laugh and cry.

“Is it true that you rarely collected your prize money in your first year of playing tournaments that you once tried to deposit $1 million through an ATM but failed?” host Sean Evans of “Hot Ones” asked Williams directly.

“All of that is true. I never played for the money. I played because I love the game…and I want to win,” said the great tennis player.

At 42, Williams has earned a total of $94.8 million in tennis tournament winnings before retiring in 2022. She has won 23 Grand Slam titles and 73 other individual titles during her 27-year tennis career.

In her first tournament in 1995, despite losing in the qualifying round, Williams still earned $240 in prize money and she didn’t care about this money.

Even with the $1 million prize money, despite everyone’s excitement about the money, all Williams wanted was to quickly deposit it in the bank so he could get back to focusing on training.

“I never spent much money. I drove to the ATM to deposit money, but it was too much, so the bank employee asked me to go inside to deposit money,” Williams recalled.

In fact, it was the taxman who had to remind Williams about the prize money she forgot to claim.

“The tax man asked me, ‘Haven’t you received your winnings?’ and I remembered that I hadn’t received this money from Zurich, that money from Moscow… I play to win and if I don’t win I don’t want to think about it. When I lose I just go crazy and try to improve myself to win next time,” Williams said with a laugh.

Money Lessons

CNBC reports that her father Richard Williams taught Serena well about being responsible with money from a young age. Because he played tournaments at a young age and earned money before he was 18, Richard had to educate his daughter to be responsible with the money she earned.

“I remember having to learn how to manage money from a young age so I wouldn’t go crazy with it, which gave my dad the confidence to let us handle our own prize money,” Williams recalls, as she accompanied her father on sponsorship deal negotiations with companies like Nike and Puma.

“I was only 16 but my dad made me go through the negotiations to make sure I understood where my future was going. I knew that prize money from tournaments would be the smallest part of my career,” Williams added.

Richard Williams’ teaching of money at a young age is extremely helpful, says Eric Landolt of UBS Global Wealth Management. Basic personal finance lessons for 5- to 8-year-olds will lay the foundation for the concepts of saving, spending and investing taught at ages 8-12.

By the time they reach adolescence, these children will be effectively equipped with knowledge of budgeting or money management to make life easier.

“Understanding personal financial management should be a basic skill that should be taught like reading and writing,” said Mr. Landolt.