14 Times Celebs Were Out-Of-Touch When Giving Financial Advice Or Complaining About Money (2024)

Plenty of celebs love to flex their luxury purchases and lavish lifestyles. While the amount of money in their bank accounts is really their business, sometimes, they think it qualifies them to give sound financial advice.

Sometimes, that advice is pretty solid for anyone, like when Sarah Michelle Gellar told CNBC Make It that she clips coupons "to this day." Other times, however, the advice is a little, well, out of touch. Occasionally, celebs also complain about the supposed "drawbacks" of being so rich.

Here are 14 times celebs were out-of-touch when giving financial advice or complaining about money:

1. In 2010, Kim, Kourtney, and Khloé Kardashian launched the Kardashian Kard Prepaid MasterCard, a prepaid debit card "laden with pernicious and predatory fees that swallow card value." Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal criticized it, saying, "Keeping up with the Kardashians is impossible using these cards...The family is marketing a dangerous financial fantasy." According to Forbes, it was "one of the worst products to enter the financial market in a long time."

The card was only on the market a month before it was pulled. Reportedly, only 250 bought it.

2. In 2017, Kim Kardashian told Inside Edition about why she felt it was "harder" for her and her siblings to grow up in a well-off family.

Here's the full clip, with this part starting at the 2:27 mark:

3. In 2022, Kim Kardashian infamously told Variety her "best advice for women in business."

Following criticism, she told Good Morning America, "It wasn't a blanket statement towards women...it was taken out of context, but I'm really sorry if it was received that way."

However, Variety denied her claim that they took her quote out of context.

Watch the full video below, with this part starting at the 5:12 mark:

4. In 2023, Mark Cuban was labeled an "out of touch billionaire" after a TikTok video in which he shared some financial advice that young people are used to hearing.

In the comments and in stitches, many viewers pointed out that not buying coffee wouldn't actually make that big a difference in their bank accounts.

Following the backlash, Mark didn't address the criticism, but he did post another "tip of the day." He said, "What's the tip of the day? Be nice, smile, cause smiling takes nothing. And you know what? We all rather do business with someone that smiles, we all rather work with somebody that smiles, we all rather just make someone's day with just a smile. It's so easy."

You can watch his TikTok below:

5. Complaining about how much she had to pay in taxes in 2011, Adele told the Guardian, "I'm mortified to have to pay 50%! [While] I use the NHS, I can't use public transport any more. Trains are always late, most state schools are sh*t, and I've gotta give you, like, four million quid — are you having a laugh?"

"When I got my tax bill in from [the album] 19, I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire," she said.

6. On a 2018 episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Ellen and her guest Ali Wong discussed their experiences with poverty. While Ali said that she was "still super duper cheap," Ellen said that growing up poor had the "opposite effect" on her.

Here's the full video, with this part starting at the 3:40 mark:

7. In 2020, YouTuber Jake Paul launched the Financial Freedom Movement, an online course that, for $20 per month, promises to teach you how to start a career on social media and the internet. In the first video, he reportedly encouraged students to "quit your job and fire your boss, or quit school because you've been lied to" and said, "The system is broken. Ask yourself why are there teenagers making millions of dollars and broke 40- and 50-year-olds?"

To make matters worse, the course was targeted at children and tweens.

Leslie Rasmussen, an associate professor at Xavier University, told BuzzFeed News, "We have this high-profile YouTuber selling this path that to me is a little dangerous, and to me, it's particularly dangerous to the younger viewers of this channel.It isn't probable for most folks to hit it big on YouTube because it's so saturated now. The landscape now isn't what it was when Jake Paul entered."

Jake told BuzzFeed News, "If you want to become an entrepreneur and you want to become financially free, you don’t need school. But my message is not to drop out of school...Your kid is wanting more. If they're the kid in class that is maybe not applying themself but are super smart, this will teach them skills they're not learning in school and they're learning from someone they look up to. Think about learning from someone you look up to versus some Mrs. Smith who you don't even know...This is something I'm super passionate about, and before I die, I want to make a difference in the world."

8. When Danny Pudi appeared on Larry King Now in 2020, the host asked him about his favorite luxuries but refused to accept "socks" or "coffee" as an answer. Larry gave Danny a suggested answer that was far out of many people's price range, including Danny's.

Here's the full video, with this part starting at the 3:20 mark:

9. In a 2022 TikTok video, a fan asked Oprah Winfrey to offer a suggestion for "a favorite gift for [their] mom [who's] not doing well." Oprah answered, "You know, a wonderful thing is that jewelry box that I had on 'Favorite Things.'" The fan told her it was too expensive," bur she said, "It's not. It's really not, it's like 100-and-something dollars."

However, she eventually told them, "Okay, then this is the perfect gift for your mom; you do a list of your top 10 reasons why you love her, and you make a beautiful card, and it'syourtop 10."

10. On a 2022 episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the host joked about record-high gas prices in the US, using his luxury electric car as the punchline.

11. In 2013, Spencer Pratt told OK! Magazine that he and his wife, Heidi Montag, "made and spent at least $10 million" in 2012. He said, "The thing is, we heard that the planet was going to end in 2012. We thought, we have got to spend this money before the asteroid hits."

Having learned from his mistakes, he continued, "Here's some advice, definitely do not spend your money thinking asteroids are coming. But the world didn't end. I would give my friends $15,000 for their birthday. Just cash. I would buy people cars. Every valet I met got a couple of hundred pounds tip. I would pay people $200 just to open doors for us."

12. Amidst the Great Recession, Natalie Portman told Interview Magazine, "As far as the more general state of things right now, I think it's kind of an exciting time. I mean, everyone is cutting back. It's happening in every industry — including our own. But I think that's going to translate into a situation where people aren't motivated by money as much as they have been in the recent past."

She continued, "A lot of my friends from college went into fields like banking for financial reasons — obviously people have school loans and things to pay off. And now, all of a sudden, they're doing jobs that they hate and they're not making as much money as they thought they would or they've lost their jobs entirely. So I've started to see people looking more toward their own passions and what really excites them. Obviously it's much easier to say that you're going to follow your passions when you're financially secure, but at least we can take solace in the fact that we now have the time to pursue the things that we really want to pursue because now the option of doing things just for the money isn't necessarily there."

13. In 2009, Craig T. Nelson discussed his dissatisfaction with the way California spent his tax money. He told Fox News, "I'm really thinking about [not paying income tax anymore]... because as a fiscally responsible grandfather, there are programs that they're asking me to fund that I refuse to fund...I've been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No. They gave me hope, and they gave me encouragement, and they gave me a vision. That came from my education."

He also said, "[California is] no longer a state. It's a hedge fund...Well, I do have a solution. There is only one way. We have to make people stand up for the responsibilities. They were accountable. And they haven't been. No one is accountable anymore for anything. No one did anything wrong. Well, you're to blame. That's to blame. This is to blame. As an investor, as someone who gets taxed an awful lot, I just say I'm not going to pay until you guys can show me that you're fiscally responsible..."

14. And finally, in 2022, Location, Location, Location presenter Kirstie Allsop — who reportedly had help from her family when she purchased her first home — told the Sunday Times, "When I bought my first property, going abroad, the easyJet, coffee, gym, Netflix lifestyle didn't exist. I used to walk to work with a sandwich. And on payday, I'd go for a pizza, and to a movie, and buy a lipstick. Interest rates were 15 percent, I was earning £11,500 a year."

Responding to someone who criticized her on Twitter, she reportedly replied, "Either you think I'm an out of touch rich bitch who doesn't get how hard it is to buy a home in many parts of the UK, or you don't.The Timescan twist things as much as they want, but in the end, it's down to whether you believe in my empathy, understanding, and experience or not."