One former NFL star has won the financial lottery through the simple act of forgetting his own investments, as Apple's decade-long growth has landed the former football player with a significant boost of funds.

Rob "Gronk" Gronkowski is one of the most recognizable names in the NFL over the past decade, having played for the multi-Super Bowl winning New England Patriots during their golden run.

He earned millions from his time in the NFL, including a six-year $54,000,000 contract with the Patriots in the middle of his time with the team, but his rather lazy stock market dealings might have been his biggest money play.

Back in 2014 Gronkowski was urged by a contractor that was building his home in Foxborough, Massachusetts to go big on Apple stock. It is reported that the contractor repeatedly told Gronk "get Apple, get Apple" every time they spoke.

This led Gronkowski to cave to the contractors request, investing $69,000 in the tech company's stock, shortly forgetting about it afterwards.

It wasn't until nearly ten years later, however, that the former tight end remembered his rather modest initial investment, and was left shocked at what it was now worth on the market.

Simply forgetting about it had allowed the $69,000 to flourish into what is now worth over $600,000, earning Gronkowski an increase of nearly ten times all for the skill of not bothering to manage it.

He had sold a small part of it shortly after the first investment, but held on to the bulk of the stocks and has since reaped the rewards.

While it doesn't exactly make a dent in his estimated net worth of $45 million according to Celebrity Net Worth, it's still a fantastic return on investment and perhaps shows that you don't exactly need to be on top of things to succeed in the stock market.

Oftentimes working with stocks or investments is all about calculated risk, which is also mitigated if you have a lot of money to burn. It's easy to predict that companies like Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla will continue to grow, but there are also plenty of times where big names have got it all wrong.

Even Elon Musk - by far the richest man in the world - has made his fair share of poor investments, with his purchase of X (formerly Twitter) being the most obvious.

It was only recently reported that the social media platform has tanked 72% of its purchase value in the two years since Musk took the keys, and while that loss remains just a fraction of the billionaire's overall wealth, it's still bound to sting.