I have no great fondness for Chris Pratt, he who makes anti-woke dog whistles, neglects to mention his son’s mother on Mother’s Day, and razes an architecturally historic Hollywood home to the ground. But, Pratt made some comments over the weekend that I think actually lead into a compelling conversation. He’s making the rounds to promote The Garfield Movie, which opened last Friday. (I haven’t seen it and likely never will, but I trust the review of my friend’s preschooler: he liked the movie theater candy.) While chatting with Sway Calloway on SiriusXM’s Sway In The Morning, Pratt shared that he was so green about money as a young adult, it took him only two months to spend his first big paycheck from an acting job, which was $75,000. That mismanagement ultimately led him to stop and think about financial planning:
Chris Pratt is opening up about the first time he received a large sum of money for his work in Hollywood.
Speaking on SiriusXM’s Sway In The Morning in a video posted on Saturday, May 25, Pratt, 44, revealed that he blew all of his first acting paycheck because he didn’t know how to handle the money.
Asked if his humble beginnings led to him struggling with how to spend money, The Garfield Movie star revealed it was the opposite for him.
“Oh, no. No, no. I was under the impression that I would never run out of money,” the former waiter said before laughing. “The first paycheck I got, 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.”
The star then sang his own rendition of George Michael’s song “Careless Whisper.”
“I was like, ‘I’m never gonna wait again. F— you, b—, I am leaving,’” he sang. “And about two months later, I was like, ‘Where’d that money go?!’”
Pratt revealed that he spent the money by going on vacation to different parts of the world like Hawaii and Australia.
“I was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna probably invest. I’m probably gonna get a yacht.’”
Pratt explained that he was never taught financial literacy when he was young and therefore didn’t know how to handle or manage money.
“It took a good amount of time for me to kind of stop and say, ‘All right, I gotta get wise about this. I have to think about, ‘What am I gonna do? How am I gonna get to the point to where if I stop working one day, I’ll still be okay? My family will be okay,’” he continued.
He added that coming up with a financial plan later in his life was “one of the steps of me growing up.”
The Jurassic World star also said that while the moments in his career where he felt like he had “made it” included getting his SAG card and a Carl’s Jr. TV commercial, buying his mother Kathy Pratt a house after appearing on the TV series Everwood was his greatest “I made it” moment.
Get ready to nerd out with me, because I am SO into the conversation of financial planning right now. Largely because, like Pratt, I came from a place of not being literate in it. The one lesson I remember getting from my parents came from my dear, late father: “Watch everything your mother and I do, then don’t do it.” He was equal parts joking and serious. My parents gave me many wonderful things — a sense of humor, critical thinking, a love of great art and food — but learning how to balance a budget was not one of them! Hearing Pratt talk about financial planning as “one of the steps of me growing up,” that resonated with me. I should probably be more ashamed to confess that it was only the onset of the pandemic when I began focusing on that part of growing up. I had no savings account! With the right guidance, I set things up so that a percentage of my paycheck started going directly into savings, which at some point I will invest upon further education. I’m sure these are baby steps to most people but it was a revelation for me! Watching that little pile build, however slowly, has been empowering to my mental as well as fiscal health. I mean, yes, everyday I inch closer and closer to Scrooge McDuck levels of obsession. But now someday I’ll (probably) be able to afford the therapy to deal with that!
And to give Chris Pratt his flowers, the floral shirt he wore when he recorded this show is dynamite.
photos credit: Getty, Getty Images for Netflix and via Instagram