Chris Pratt reveals his first paycheck was $75,000. But it vanished within two months
One of the biggest movie stars who led franchises like "Jurassic Park" and "Guardians of the Galaxy" wasn't very wise with his first paycheck. In a recent episode of the radio show "Sway in the Morning," Chris Pratt shared that he spent his first big acting paycheck quickly and had to make adjustments to manage his finances after he got famous. The actor also shed light on how he grew up with little money and the importance of financial literacy in early life.
Where did all the money go?
When Pratt was asked if he was frugal with his first acting paycheck, the answer was a big "No!". “Oh, no. No, no. I was under the impression that I would never run out of money,” Pratt said laughing. He then explained that his first check seemed like a lot of money to him as he had been living on very little for a long time.
"I was like ‘Are you serious? I had lived on very little money for a long time, so the first big job I got… was a TV movie. I got paid $75,000," he said. He then broke into singing his own version of George Michael's hit song, "Careless Whisper."
He then added that after just two months of getting paid, he was like "Where’d that money go?" Pratt revealed that he blew through his first paycheck on vacation to Hawaii, Australia, and different parts of the world.
"I never could have possibly imagined making that amount of money. And it went very quickly," he explained. He said that he had thought of investing the money and buying a yacht at the same time.
Pratt admitted that he was never taught financial literacy when he was young and therefore didn’t know how to manage money.
Importance of Financial literacy growing up
The Marvel actor explained that growing up he "never had any money". However, as life got expensive for him when he became famous, he realized he needed to come up with a plan.
“It took a good amount of time for me to kind of stop and say, ‘All right, I gotta get wise about this," Pratt explained.
He added that he had to think about what he would do once he stopped working. How will he and his family live, will they be okay, and so on? "So, kind of coming up with a financial literacy plan, you know, later in my life was sort of one of the steps of me growing up," he explained.
Thus, experts also recommend that talking about money with young children has a lot of benefits as it increases chances for them to learn how to manage their money properly, once they start earning.
“In an ideal world, parents would start talking with their children about money very early on," Brittany Griffin, policy and communications deputy at the Utah Office of State Treasurer told Investopedia. She further added that money management is largely behavioral and teaching kids about it at a young age helps them to start applying them in everyday life.
