Jay Leno is my neighbor. He’s not my next-door neighbor, but our small Newport, RI community consists of around 60,000 people. Even though I’ve never met him, I hear he’s an extremely nice guy. That’s why this is a uniquely difficult article to write.
A couple of days ago I was reading Money Magazine and came across the following article:
I haven’t seen a money/celebrity article this bad since the famous Men’s Health/Erin Burnett article of late 2007. A few days after I pointed it out it started to make headline news.
This isn’t as bad as that one was, but it reminded me of it. (Now I wonder if the Kylie Jenner self-made billionaire mess was as bad.)
Let’s start with the subheader, “The comedian enjoys the fastlane – but lives like he’s on his last dime.”
I had trouble reconciling that with this piece of news from about 15 months ago, Jay Leno just bought a $13.5 million oceanfront mansion in Newport, R.I. — take a look inside
Here are some nuggets from the article according to the real estate listing:
A gated entrance and winding drive leads up to the estate, which sits on a 9-acre lot and features 15,851 square feet of living space. The home has 12 bedrooms, 12 full bathrooms and three half-baths, according to the listing. It’s also packed with luxe amenities, including a carriage house, walled garden and tennis court.
(Grrr… no Oxford comma!)
There’s more to the description, but a $13.5 million home tells you all you need to know. Using standard estimates on maintenance of a home of 1% of annual price per year, he’ll spend about $135,000 a year just to keep it as it is. Maybe it’s even more with the extensive landscaping.
Jay Leno’s “last dime” must be Scrooge McDuck lucky one.
Originally, I thought that the online version of May 15, 2018 was before he bought the mansion, but it was after.
The Money Magazine article above also mentions that he has around 350 motor vehicles. That includes one he bought in 1999 for $800,000. That’s over 1.2 million in inflation-adjusted dollars today.
I found only one thing in the article that led me to believe he’s frugal. Leno says he doesn’t spend much on clothes.
Leno does make an attempt to preach good financial habits. He says that he never bought anything before he could afford it, never bought anything on credit, and that cash is king. Unfortunately, these are all things that Paris Hilton could say as soon as she was old enough to talk. While Leno made his fortune himself, it’s doesn’t mean he’s frugal. Those financial habits are very easy to follow… if you have a net worth of $350 million.
The Money Magazine article finished up with a quote of “I live pretty frugally.”
If a $13.5 million home and a $70 million car collection*, is living frugally then, you too, can be frugal!
I’m having a lot of difficulty in trying to stretch that to be frugal… even in celebrity terms. I haven’t seen his car show, but if someone is making a show to show off dozens of millions of dollars of your purchases… you can’t say you “live pretty frugally.”
I’m almost having a lot of trouble trying to figure out what feels worse to me about this. Should it be:
- Jay Leno himself – I actually think that Jay Leno might deserve the least blame. He’s just saying things like they are for him and giving a little background in his past.
- Jay Leno’s publicist – Shouldn’t his publicist take a look at this and say, “Ummm, Jay, this comes off like an alcoholic claiming he isn’t one because he rarely drinks tequila. Instead he only drinks 2 liters of vodka by noon each day”?
- Money Magazine – Shouldn’t an editor at Money Magazine take a look at this and say, “We lose a lot of credibility when we blindly equate spending dozens of millions of dollars with being frugal. Only Larry Ellison** can relate when he reads this. The rest of our audience is going to collectively think WTF“?
I’m also confused about why Money Magazine would recycle this interview from about a year ago now. I wonder if they ran out of production time and quickly edited something old as filler.
I’m going to leave those questions up to you, the reader to answer. Let me know your thoughts in comments.
And if I’ve been a little harsh to Jay Leno here and he’s reading it, hopefully he has a sense of humor ;-). I’m not nearly as bad as John Oliver was a little over a week ago:
* This is estimated by adding the 50 more cars mentioned in this interview to the $50 million mentioned at that link.
** Larry Ellison is one of my other rich “neighbors”.
Here is the thing, some celebrities build their reputations on being “the every day guy” or “average joe” when they are not. Jay has earned $350 dollars from TV shows and is by far not a regular person. He puts himself in a position by wearing denim clothes, and talks like an every day guy, but buys million dollar homes and cars. He is not frugal by any means but part of his appeal is if I as a regular joe got his kind of money, I’d be just like him. I mean other celebrities go the other end, like Paris Hilton spending money, etc.
The sad thing is many people don’t have the critical thinking skills to determine that these people are not what they seem and just read the headline and assume it is fact. This is the reason we have measles outbreaks in the US at the moment. It is just hard to use your brain.
I don’t begrudge him for spending money that way either. However, I think he should have the self-awareness to say, “Maybe I can’t play the ‘average joe’ frugal role in Money Magazine while talking about my extensive spending on cars.” Maybe he could have went with another angle or maybe ax the interview all together.
I am not saying I begrudge him, just like you said – more self awareness. Either that or the editors of Money making that editorial decision for him. Hey you only live once so spend it while you can enjoy it.
I think people(me too) tend to lose perspective based on who they are around and what they see regularly. In Jay’s circles he may be frugal, but his scope is so limited. Why are people so hateful about politics, religion, etc? They don’t have a relationship with people with differing views. I know it’s a popular growth teaching that your friends should be those that challenge you and make you grow, basically “friend up”. I get it, but I think it’s good to have a close friend that works hard but can’t afford health insurance, maybe skips a meal to buy the kids new shoes. Puts life in perspective.
Even if he hangs out with celebrities, I don’t think he can really be seen as frugal though, right? And as a comedian, I’d think he’d have to keep the pulse on the “average joe” as Big-D tells it.
I agree with having friends like that. In fact, I’m starting to seriously worry that my kids have it too good and aren’t getting that perspective.
Our kids had it good, not sure how to adjust that. We did private school, but neither kid took advantage of that so the ROI was terrible. If I had it to do over I’d put them in the local(very good) public school.
Heh, that’s a pretty skewed definition of frugal.
Jay Leno should spend more. He has a lot of money and shouldn’t hoard it.
His home is just a tiny fraction of his net worth, that’s a lot better than more people.
It doesn’t read well to the average Joe, for sure.
Yes, Leno should spend more. He should look to hire local talent who can help him hone his brand online a little better (conta
I spotted another article on CNBC where he claims to be frugal too – https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/11/heres-how-jay-leno-refuses-to-spend-his-money.html
I like this quote:
“When I did the Tonight Show, I was lucky, because the Tonight Show just paid for all the clothes. I go to a store now thinking shirts are 40 bucks and [I see] $180. What! Get out of here! That’s ridiculous.”
As one would expect, me and Leno shop at very different stores.
Take the dollar figures out of it: I remember when one of those books about Leno and Letterman came out, it mentioned that Leno banked the entirely of his Late Show paycheck, spending mainly money he earned from doing standup.
Banking your paycheck and living on what you earn from a side gig? Sounds frugal to me.
It’s hard to take the dollars out of frugality. I also think there might be a time-gap in here. I don’t know if he made $100 million to buy cars and mansions from his stand-up side gig. Even so, if your side gig makes that kind of money, it’s stretching the definition of what most people would call a “side gig.”
One other thing worth mentioning is that Leno mentioned that he was given clothes at the Late Show, so he didn’t have to buy them. I bet they also provided food during the day filming. It’s possible that working conditions eliminated some of the things that typical people pay for.
Not to go full snowflake with it, but if we stick to dollar figures as the final arbiter of the term, it’s going to be tough for anyone even buying a computer to post here to make a claim to frugality. last I checked the worldwide median income was around 10k….
To me frugality is about being thrifty within your means, not keeping your spending to a number that any third party will subjectively feel is appropriate. 13 million for a house is a big number. It’s also less than half of one percent of Leno’s net worth from what I could see online.
I wasn’t saying that dollar figures have to be the final arbiter, but I think they should play a central role. However, even a computer purchase (at least of some kind) could usually fit into a frugal definition. For example, it could allow you to cut the cable or research ways to save money buying a car.
While the worldwide median income may be 10k, we can consider the regional income level. For example, the United States median is much higher than the 10k number. That’s our general context. Someone in the comments above mentioned that Leno might be frugal when compared to his peers which is another context to consider. For this article, I used the context of what the average Money reader may be. That’s typically someone in the United States, who is probably above average in terms of earnings (simply by the context of what they are reading.)
And while the $13 million house may be less than half of one percent of Leno’s net worth, it might not be his primary residence. Most stars wouldn’t choose to live in Rhode Island in the winter… especially if they also have a Beverly Hills home – https://carproperty.com/jay-leno-s-beverly-hills-house-and-garage-ad50061496.htm. The house only has a 6-car garage, so he has to store his 180 cars elsewhere. In short, there’s a lot more spending beyond even these large numbers.