“I used it to pay off the house because I was always afraid of becoming homeless again.”
Tiffany Haddish knows how to save Like a Boss.
The formerly homeless actress revealed her spending habits, including living on $500 a month early in her career, when she began booking roles on Tyler Perry’s ‘If Loving You Is Wrong’ and ‘The Carmichael Show,’ where she “began to make a little bit of money” from acting.
“I started figuring out how to create generational wealth. The quickest way to do that, and the first way you should do it, is to buy some land,” Haddish said in a Cosmopolitan cover story. “Before we even got on season 2 of ‘The Carmichael Show,’ I bought a house. Everyone told me to wait, but I didn’t care. All I knew was that I always had to make enough money to support myself and the house, and I did.”
The Card Counter star added, “Between the next season of this show, the ‘Keanu’ movie, and making sure I can comfortably live on $500 a month, I’ve been able to pay half the house off. The “Girls Trip” check was the last check. People told me to spend it differently, but I used it to pay off the house because I was always afraid of becoming homeless again.”
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The Haunted Mansion actress’ commitment to her home paid off: “Now I have a surplus of money,” Haddish said, “but I’m still scared of going poor again. Every film I made, I just bought another piece of land or a house.”
The 2017 hit “Girls Trip” cemented Haddish as a breakout star, shining in the pal comedy alongside Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith and Regina Hall. Haddish shared in 2020 that she was only paid $80,000 for the film, which grossed more than $140 million on a reported budget of $20 million.
With talks of a 2020 sequel to “Girls Trip,” Haddish told the Huffington Post that production stalled because an executive said, “Oh, you guys want too much money” to come back.
Haddish previously told IndieWire in 2021 that she’s been in talks with her Girls Trip co-stars about making her own movie on her terms.
“I’ve read these books about economics and all that stuff and I think we should build our own,” Haddish said. “So we wrote this thing, came up with all these ideas, and then everyone was busy again! But I have a really great outline but I don’t know it could happen. I heard from [producer] Will Packer not long ago so we’ll see. I do not know. I wish. And if it’s not ‘Girls Trip’, we’ll make our own.”
Regarding finances, Haddish revealed: “I have this broke girl mentality, this ‘I never want to be homeless’ mentality. I started thinking, ‘Well, okay, I have goals that I want to achieve, and those goals aren’t always necessarily about money, except for one of them. I want to be on Forbes Magazine’s Highest Paid Actresses list. I want to be on that list.”
A year later, Haddish has now clarified her career prospects.
“It’s not about money. It’s about power and being able to create opportunities,” Haddish told Cosmo. “For example, on my show ‘The Afterparty,’ which I’m on right now, I made a request to see more people like me on set.”
And their goal is gender equality too, even for set perks.
“I met Robert De Niro at the Laugh Factory in the lobby and he talked about how his contracts say he can keep whatever he wears,” Haddish said. “In the beginning no one wanted to dress me or lend me anything to wear. So I had to buy stuff. Then it got to the point where people lend me things, but then I want to keep them because I like them and want to wear them again!”
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