Watched this entire Joe Rogan interview from 2015.
Very interesting and professional with great stories.

A few years ago, I read some very interesting financial anecdotes about Jay Leno. He hardly carries a credit card, he always paid in cash. He spends very little on clothes. He never spent his Tonight Show money, he lived on his stand up earnings (the smaller of the two). He pays for his houses in cash, never goes the mortgage route, same with his cars.

He is a huge believer of living well below his means.

And he's smart enough to keep his politics to himself.

quote:

Originally posted by oddball:
A few years ago, I read some very interesting financial anecdotes about Jay Leno. He hardly carries a credit card, he always paid in cash. He spends very little on clothes. He never spent his Tonight Show money, he lived on his stand up earnings (the smaller of the two). He pays for his houses in cash, never goes the mortgage route, same with his cars.

He is a huge believer of living well below his means.

All those cars. All those highly collectable cars. Seems like I recall around 300 cars, in a climate-controlled building with a full time mechanic and care taker were paid for by doing stand-up?!?

Clearly you can make a small fortune in stand-up comedy. Even David Chapelle talks about this doing corporate gigs for big bucks.

quote:

Originally posted by TMats:

quote:

Originally posted by oddball:

He is a huge believer of living well below his means.

All those cars.
All those highly collectable cars.
Seems like I recall around 300 cars, in a climate-controlled building with a full time mechanic and care taker were paid for by doing stand-up?!?

To say everything is paid by "stand-up" is a highly myopic view, IMO.

Not to mention he willingly too a pay cut in order to keep parts of his crew on the Tonight Show from getting laid off.

On his Top Gear interview, he also says he gets to keep his money because he only has 1 wife…

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
To say everything is paid by "stand-up" is a highly myopic view, IMO.

quote:

From the moment he entered the working world, “I always had two incomes,” he explains to CNBC. “I’d bank one and I’d spend one.”

And he made sure to spend the smaller amount.

“When I was younger, I would always save the money I made working at the car dealership and I would spend the money I made as a comedian,” he says. ”When I started to get a bit famous, the money I was making as a comedian was way more than the money I was making at the car dealership, so I would bank that and spend the car dealership money."

Leno continued relying on this strategy even after he started hosting “The Tonight Show” in 1992, even though he reportedly earned as much as $30 million a year at the height of his career.

“When I got ‘The Tonight Show,’ I always made sure I did 150 [comedy show] gigs a year so I never had to touch the principal,” Leno says. “I’ve never touched a dime of my ‘Tonight Show’ money. Ever.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/1...ight-show-money.html

Net Worth of $450 million, if online numbers are to be believed.

quote:

Originally posted by DanH:
...On his Top Gear interview, he also says he gets to keep his money because he only has 1 wife…

This is a superb strategy to financial peace if you can find a way to pull it off! haha!

Leno's CNBC show is fine, he covers a lot of ground, sometimes with interesting-enough people.

Over the last couple years of covid, he couldn't produce those shows. So he went ahead on his own, one cameraperson?
He went into depth on one particular car for the whole show, his depth of knowledge on those vehicles and his love for them
made for Leno at his best IMO, understated and never boring. Look through his YouTubes, find a car you may have special thoughts about and I guarantee you'll
be entertained and learn a lot.

quote:

Originally posted by Ripley:
Leno's CNBC show is fine, he covers a lot of ground, sometimes with interesting-enough people.

Over the last couple years of covid, he couldn't produce those shows. So he went ahead on his own, one cameraperson?
He went into depth on one particular car for the whole show, his depth of knowledge on those vehicles and his love for them
made for Leno at his best IMO, understated and never boring. Look through his YouTubes, find a car you may have special thoughts about and I guarantee you'll
be entertained and learn a lot.

He's been doing Jay Leno's Garage long before CNBC. His youtube series has always been much better than the highly produced CNBC version. The youtube channel is all about the cars (or motorcycles, or tractors). You really sense his passion for the vehicles and his desire to share his knowledge and experiences. My favortive is when he has somebody on the show that he just flagged down on the road because he liked the car. His restoration vlog is also facinating with all the work he puts into keeping all his stuff in working order.

A friend of mine graduated high school with him in Andover, MA. He was funny then, but also a nerdy, gearhead kid. She attended a reunion a few years that Jay showed up at. All the jocks, cheerleaders and other glad-handers who wouldn't give him the time of day in school were all over him. He was gracious, shook hands, signed autographs and posed for pictures. Then he went and sat with the people who had been his real friends (including my friend) and ignored the phonies the rest of the night.

forget warren buffet, I am going to Jay for financial advice when I hit the mega millions lottery.

I really hope He's getting $750,000. per episode of this you bet your life business

its pretty unwatchable

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bendable,

I have met him briefly twice, once before a local stand up show and once walking across the grass at the Pebble Beach show. By himself both times, no entourage.Totally unaffected, down to earth guy, who loves cars and is lucky enough to be able to afford some nice ones.

He is funny…I will never take that away, but having grown up watching Johnny, Dave, and then Conan, I will always consider Leno the villain in the Late-night Wars; especially the way he did Conan.

One reason he guest hosted all those years for Carson is he agreed to take scale. And didn’t demand a ton. He swears he didn’t have an agent and negotiated his own deals. Scale was like $500 a night. He just knew that eventually he’d get his break and the big money would follow. Other guest hosts wanted like 10-20k a night and NBC was like well Jay is just as good for next to nothing.

Friends of my folks had a concours quality collector car and casually knew him that way. Super down to earth guy. I do like when he geeks out on the YouTube channel and goes off extemporaneously about some obscure long out of business car company.

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
He is funny…I will never take that away, but having grown up watching Johnny, Dave, and then Conan, I will always consider Leno the villain in the Late-night Wars; especially the way he did Conan.

He didn’t do Conan wrong. The tonight show’s ratings dropped by approximately a third when Conan took over. In fact, NBC begged Leno to take the tonight show back over sooner, but Leno told them to give Conan more time. They did what Leno recommended. His ratings were still terrible and then Jay took the show back over.

Conan likes to play the victim, but the fact is his ratings stunk.

Conan is like some of the other people on TV - he THINKS he is funny. Others don't.

The current late-night hosts (especially former SNL people) are in that same category.



Jay Leno is ACTUALLY funny. He is also very smart in business.

I read, a good 25 or more years ago, an article in TV Guide about Hollywood people with the best reputations for being nice to work with or for. Leno was at the top of the list. Others cited included, but weren't limited to, Angela Lansbury, Jane Seymour and Heather Locklear. Now if only I could remember where I put something a minute ago.