Anderson Cooper: My Son Isn't Inheriting 'Some Sort Of Pot Of Gold'
Anderson Cooper says his son Wyatt will have to work for a living when he’s older, no inheritance
If you believe everything you read on the internet, then you would believe that Anderson Cooper is worth an estimated $200 million. Despite his extreme wealth, the beloved CNN anchor says his son Wyatt Morgan Cooper is NOT going to be a trust fund baby and will have to work for his living just like he did.
Cooper won’t give his son Wyatt a “pot of gold” when he’s older.
“I don’t believe in passing on huge amounts of money. I don’t know what I’ll have,” Cooper said in a recent episode of Air Mail‘s Morning Meeting podcast (via Vanity Fair). “I’m not that interested in money, but I don’t intend to have some sort of pot of gold for my son. I’ll go with what my parents said…‘College will be paid for, and then you gotta get on it.’”
Little Wyatt’s gonna have to soak up the good life while he can. Hangouts with Andy Cohen and his son and that Greenwich Village lifestyle? His days are numbered.
Cooper’s mother Gloria Vanderbilt had the same attitude about money and inheritances.
Back in 2014, before his son was born, Cooper told Howard Stern that his mother, the late Gloria Vanderbilt, also did not give Cooper an inheritance when he was in his 20s.
“My mom’s made clear to me that there’s no trust fund, there’s none of that,” 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.”
In an ironic twist, Page Six reports that when Cooper’s mother died, she did will her entire estate to him (it had to go somewhere, right?), though despite rumors of her vast wealth, she was only worth $1.5 million at the time of her death, which Cooper inherited the entirety of. Though $1.5 million is a huge amount of money for us regular folk, it’s not a lot for Gloria Vanderbilt, who was reportedly worth tens of millions in her life. For someone like Cooper to see his mother’s financial rise and fall (which he writes about it in his new book Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty) is perhaps why he has this attitude towards money and what he’ll pass on to his own son.
The thing is, Wyatt Cooper’s father is Anderson Cooper and his dad’s best friends are Andy Cohen and Kelly Ripa, to name a few. This kid is probably going to be running a television network one day, no inheritance required. In the meantime, one-year-old Wyatt needs only to preoccupy himself with being the adorable little cutie that he is.
