The unwritten rules come with the new money. Every young pro knows them. The first is to buy mom a house.
"My mom demanded a $1 million house," Phillip Buchanon said. "And it's not that I wouldn't buy her one. It's the expectation — the demand — of it that you don't know about until you're there. What could I do? She's my mom. I bought a house."
The second unwritten rule is to make it sprinkle, if not fully rain money on extended family, too. They expect it. Siblings. Cousins. Aunts …
"An uncle who was my father figure — he taught me how to hit in baseball; he was the first person I hit in pads [in football] — he said if I didn't give him $10,000 he was going to rob that much from me,'' Buchanon said.