Anderson Cooper Made A Bold Decision About His $200 Million Fortune

Anderson Cooper has been one of America’s best-loved anchormen for nearly two decades now. And CNN sure seems to recognize his worth. In fact, the silver fox now earns more in a month than some of his viewers will in a lifetime. But in 2021 the newscaster surprised everyone when he revealed what he plans to do with all his wealth.

A cool $200 million

So how much exactly does Cooper have in the bank? Well, according to website Celebrity Net Worth the figure is somewhere around the $200 million mark. That number will only continue to grow, too. He reportedly earns a cool $12 million each year for his Anderson Cooper 360 show on CNN.

Shipping tycoon

Of course, Cooper is used to being surrounded by money. His great-great-great grandpa is none other than Cornelius Vanderbilt, a railroad and shipping tycoon reported to have been one of the five richest people in history. And Anderson’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, inherited some of that fortune: $5 million in 1925 to be exact, but that’s more like an inflation-adjusted $70 million in today’s money.

Gloria Vanderbilt

Gloria was herself initially reported to have amassed $200 million by the time she passed away following a battle with stomach cancer in 2019. The heiress’ fortune was said to have been boosted as the founder of a popular denim clothing company. Of course, Cooper had already made a similar amount himself at this point, too.

CNN regular

Since the early day of his career as an ABC News correspondent in the mid-1990s, Cooper's success has only grown. Then, in 2001, he landed an anchorman position on CNN, where he's remained ever since. And as the newscaster’s popularity grew, so did his net worth. In 2007, the star doubled his annual salary to $4 million, thanks to a lucrative new contract.

Multiple Emmys

And Cooper’s often proved that he’s worth it. In fact, he's picked up several Emmys during his journalistic career awarded for his coverage of major events like the funeral of the Princess of Wales and the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010. But along with earning accolades and a respected reputation as a journalist, Cooper's reaped some massive rewards.

Splashing the cash

In 2010 Cooper spent $4.3 million on a converted firehouse in the Greenwich Village area of New York. The anchorman also has a property by the beach in Trancoso, a town in Brazil. But since April 2020 the newscaster is more likely to have been splashing the cash on milk formula and diapers.

Proud father

Yes, that’s when Cooper revealed live on air that he was now a proud father. The CNN favorite later captioned an Instagram snap of himself holding a little tot, “This is Wyatt Cooper. He is three days old. He is named after my father, who died when I was ten. I hope I can be as good a dad as he was.”

Remarkable surrogate

Cooper went on to express how grateful he was for the opportunity. He thanked the medical team involved in Wyatt’s birth, the baby’s “remarkable surrogate,” and everyone who helped “pave the way.” The anchorman — who publicly came out in 2012 — also revealed that he had never thought that becoming a father was an option as a gay kid.

Shared custody

Custody of Wyatt is shared between Cooper and his ex-boyfriend Benjamin Maisani. The newscaster and businessman had spent nine years together before going their separate ways in 2018. But as the journalist revealed to TV show Entertainment Tonight shortly after, their split had been entirely amicable. He said, “We are still family to each other, and love each other very much.”

Unusual but awesome

It’s an arrangement that a year on seemed to still be going swimmingly. In a chat with People magazine, Cooper admitted that although his and Maisani’s set-up was unusual it was also “awesome.” He said, “I’ve always believed that if you’ve been with somebody and that ends, in terms of an intimate relationship, if you love somebody, there’s no reason why that love shouldn’t continue.”

The usual bickering

That’s not to say it’s always a bed of roses between the pair, as Cooper freely admitted. He said, “There’s the usual bickering that any two people have when there’s a kid involved, like what time should he go to swimming class, or should he wear the overalls, or whatever. But all silly, minor things. We get along great.”

Parental inspiration

Speaking to the same magazine shortly after Wyatt’s birth, Cooper revealed he had been inspired to become a parent by his own. The star explained, “My dad grew up very poor in Mississippi; my mom, obviously, grew up the way she did. [So to] have them meet and fall in love and create a family of their own and have this little family of ours... it made me really sad to think that I’m the only person left from that union.”

Family loss

Cooper went on to add, “I’m the only person left who remembers all those stories of my mom, my dad, and my brother. I wanted to have a child who came from that and grew up knowing about that. That’s why I chose to do it the way I did it.” The anchorman’s older brother Carter had taken his own life aged just 23 in 1988. And the newsman had lost his father as a ten-year-old; his parent hadn’t survived a heart operation.

Bravo to Andy Cohen

But Cooper’s immediate family wasn’t the only inspiration behind his decision to become a father. He was also encouraged by how his close friend Andy Cohen had taken to parenthood, too. The Bravo regular had welcomed son Ben into the world via surrogacy a year earlier. And as the newscaster observed to newspaper USA Today, “I figured if he can do it, that sort of gave me the final push.”

Inherently cheap

As well as asking Andy for advice, Cooper has also asked his long-time friend for hand-me-downs. Yes, despite earning $12 million per year for his work on CNN, the newsman isn’t afraid to admit that he’s “inherently cheap.” It’s why you’ll often see Wyatt in clothes previously worn by Andy’s son, Ben.

Clothes shopping

Cooper explained why someone with a reported net worth of $200 million didn’t just head for the nearest designer baby clothing store. He said, “I was planning on going shopping, which I hate to do. And then online shopping: How do you do that for baby clothes?... It just seemed weird. So yeah, he just gave me all the clothes.”

Other methods

Surrogacy hadn’t been the only method that Cooper had considered when it came to fatherhood. He told People that adopting a child from abroad had also been something he’d investigated. But the combination of red tape and the need for privacy had inspired the newsman to go down a different route.

Another Cooper?

Cooper is also open to giving Wyatt a little sister or brother in the future, although he admits he needs time to clear his head and get some well-earned sleep first before properly considering it. Whether the news anchor will opt for surrogacy again remains to be seen, though. He described the whole process as “difficult,” “time-consuming,” and “incredibly expensive.”

A big fat nothing

The fact that baby Wyatt has already cost Cooper a small fortune perhaps explains why the anchorman made a surprising revelation in 2021. During an appearance on Morning Meeting, a podcast spinoff from digital news source Air Mail, the CNN regular told listeners what he planned to leave his son in his will. And it pretty much amounts to a big fat nothing.

No pot of gold

A candid Cooper explained to the hosts, “I don’t believe in passing on huge amounts of money. I don’t know what I’ll have. I’m not that interested in money, but I don’t intend to have some sort of pot of gold for my son.” And just like the decision to become a parent, this viewpoint was also inspired by his mother.

College money

Cooper added, “I’ll go with what my parents said…‘College will be paid for, and then you gotta get on it.’” The anchorman had first disclosed his mom’s stance on the matter in a 2014 chat on The Howard Stern Show. The journalist told the shock jock that he’d already been informed that there was no trust fund waiting for him once his heiress mother passed away.

The inheritance curse

Far from being bitter about the lack of a financial windfall, Cooper insisted that he was completely on board with his mom’s wishes. He said, “I don’t believe in inheriting money… I think it’s a curse… From the time I was growing up, if I felt like there was some pot of gold waiting for me, I don’t know if I would have been so motivated.”

The reality of money

Cooper’s sentiments echoed those of his mother’s when she discussed the money that had been passed through the Vanderbilt family in a 1985 interview with newspaper The New York Times. Gloria had said, “I’m not knocking inherited money. But the money I’ve made has a reality to me that inherited money doesn’t have.”

Do as I say...

Yet it seems as though Gloria didn’t stay entirely true to her word. Following her death at the age of 95 in 2019, website Page Six reported that probate documents showed the heiress had left Cooper the majority of her estate. That figure was estimated to be approximately $1.5 million — a sum accurately predicted by the newsman five years previously.

Wildly off the mark

Yes, on The Howard Stern Show, Cooper had dismissed rumors that his mother still had hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank. He said, “I don’t know what the amount is going to be but it’s not some huge estate.” The newscaster also offered an explanation as to how the Vanderbilt family had lost so much money.

Generous to a fault

Cooper said, “My mom lived a big life and made a lot of money, spent a lot of money, had people embezzle money. She wasn’t interested in money. I know people would imagine that’s what she was interested in. She had no sense of it. She cared about being generous to her friends and having a nice physical environment and creating art.”

Great guess

But Cooper never took advantage of his mom’s generous spirit. In fact, he ended up paying back the money she had given him for college, among other things. Proving that he hasn’t earned a reputation as CNN’s shrewdest newsman for nothing, the journalist then estimated that his mom’s estate would be between $1.5 and $2 million.

Sharing the estate

Cooper did have to share at least some of the estate that Gloria had unexpectedly passed on. The property she owned in Midtown New York was given to her oldest son, Stan Stokowski. But Chris Stokowski, the son to whom she hadn’t spoken in years, wasn’t mentioned in the court documents obtained by Page Six.

Following in mom’s footsteps

So is Cooper concerned at all that he might follow in his mother’s footsteps and not have anything to leave in his will anyway? It seems not. When asked the question during his appearance on Morning Meeting, the 60 Minutes host replied, “No, because I grew up watching money being lost and knowing it was being lost.”

Forging his own way

Cooper went on to add, “I, from a very young age, I was very aware of, ‘This is not me. This is something my mom has, or this is money that my mom has. But it’s not money I’m going to have, and I need to forge my own way.’”

Rise and fall

And Cooper was also more than happy to discuss how all this money was lost in his 2021 book. But the Emmy winner wrote Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty more as a family history lesson than a cautionary tale. In a chat with People, the news anchor said, “In some ways, I wanted this to be a letter to my son.”

Family history

Cooper continued, “My dad wrote a book before he died about his family growing up in Mississippi. And because he died when I was so young, a lot that I know of him came from that book. I wanted to write a letter to Wyatt about this crazy and unusual part of his family’s past.”

Gordon Ramsay

Mind you, Cooper is far from the first celebrity to try to motivate their kids to pay their own way. In 2017 Gordon Ramsay told newspaper The Daily Telegraph that he wants to avoid spoiling his and wife Tana’s offspring. The fiery celebrity chef will put down a deposit for a flat representing a quarter of its value, but nothing more.

Daniel Craig

Actor Daniel Craig also doesn't plan on leaving money to his children. Craig explained to Saga magazine in 2020 that he found the concept of inheriting money distasteful, adding, “My philosophy is to get rid of it or give it away before you go. I don’t want to leave great sums to the next generation.” And he's certainly not the only celebrity that shares that opinion.

Kutcher and Kunis

Like Craig, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis are also giving any ideas about trust funds a wide berth. In 2018, on Dax Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert, Kutcher revealed that he and his wife plan to donate all their cash to charity when they shuffle off their mortal coils. Kutcher acknowledged, “My kids are living a really privileged life, and they don’t even know it.”

Gene Simmons

Then there’s Gene Simmons, who told People in 2007 that he had no plans to pass down any of the riches he earned as the lead vocalist of KISS. He stated, “I don’t want them to say, ‘Thanks, dad, for making me rich.’ No, you wanna be able to stand on your own two feet and say, ‘I did that.’”

Bill Gates

And if Bill Gates’ kids thought they’d automatically enter the “World’s Richest” list once their father passed away, then they needed to think again. In 2011 the Microsoft founder revealed to newspaper The Daily Mail that his offspring would be inheriting just a “miniscule portion” of his fortune. Of course, with a reported net worth of $130 billion, that “miniscule portion” is still likely to be a multi-million-dollar sum.

Pocket money

Gates, who plans to give most of his money away to charity, explained, “They will be given an unbelievable education and that will all be paid for. And certainly anything related to health issues we will take care of. But in terms of their income, they will have to pick a job they like and go to work. They are normal kids now. They do chores, they get pocket money.”