Jerry Seinfeld is a renowned American TV star and comedian. His net worth is just $50 million shy of a billion dollars, standing at $950 million. He earned a big chunk of his fortune from the famous sitcom Seinfeld. The show turned out to be highly profitable in the history of television.
Name: Jerry Seinfeld
Net Worth: $950 Million
Date of Birth: April 29, 1954
Nationality: United States of America
Height: 1.803 meters
Gender: Male
Source of Wealth: Professional Comedian, Actor, TV & Film Producer
Jerry Seinfeld’s Net Worth
Jerry earned around $69 million a year, which inflated his net worth to reach $950 million. Most of his income and net worth flow from his famous show Seinfeld. Seinfeld, the show, however is not the only stimulus behind his eye-popping net worth. Jerry also earned money from his best-selling books and his public speaking. He also grabbed hold of a bunch of highly rewarding endorsement deals, which includes a $10 million deal in 2008 for creating ads for Microsoft.
NBC paid the cast members of Friends a staggering amount of $1 million per episode. During the ninth season, NBC still paid $1 million per episode to the six cast members of the show.
Jerry Seinfeld’s Salary
Jerry made $100,000 for doing five episodes of Seinfeld’s first season. That’s about $20,000 for one episode. His pay per episode rose to $40,000 for the next two seasons and he earned around $3.5 million in total. For the next three seasons that are 4, 5, and 6, Jerry did 70 episodes and earned up to $100,000 per episode.
The total earnings for these three seasons accumulate to a total of $7 million. The season 7 and season 8 consisted of 46 episodes. At that point, his per episode earning had risen to $500, 000, which equates to a total of $23 million. Season 9 of the show elevated Jerry’s earnings further as he bagged $1 million per episode.
If we add up his earnings, he made about $60 million in salary. If we adjust it for inflation, it will be $100 million. NBC wanted to have Jerry back for the 10th season. They also offered him $5 million per episode that would help him make $100 million for the season. However, the deal didn’t materialize.
Early Life
Jerry Seinfeld was born in Brooklyn, New York on April 29, 1954. However, he grew in Massapequa, New York. He went to the State University of New York. After he completed his second year in the university, he got himself transferred to Queens College where he studied communications and theater. He found a passion for comedy while he was studying at Queens College. His passion led him to open-mic nights. After college, he spent about 15 years cultivating a career as a comedian before he hit upon the television jackpot. He made a successful comic tour in May 1981. His appearance on The Tonight Show was an extremely successful one. This appearance paved the way for his appearances on Late Night with David Letterman.
Personal Life
Jerry dated Shoshanna Lonstein for about four years. Their love affair started while she was still 17 and studying in high school. He was more than double her age at 38. He met Jessica Sklar in 1998 while he was at a sports club. Three weeks after her honeymoon, Sklar left her husband to move in with Jerry. The couple married after her husband filed for divorce.
Earnings from show reruns
Other cast members of the show like Michael Richards, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Jason Alexander don’t have a stake in Seinfeld that’s why they don’t make any money from the reruns of the show. However, Jerry Seinfeld still owns a stake in the show, which is why he continues to earn money from it.
Car Collection
Jerry possesses a big collection of Porshes. He has around 150 vehicles. Out of those 45 are Porshes. While living in Los Angeles, he kept his collection at the Santa Monica airport’s hanger. In 2002, he purchased $1.4 million property in Manhattan and constructed a $500,000 garage to house his cars.
Real Estate Investments
Jerry and Jessica paid a total of $32 million for three transactions to buy a 12-acre estate in New York. They bought the estate from different sellers. Reportedly, they also spent several million dollars on renovating the property. The renovations include building a big new house on the same property and also adding a private baseball diamond to the back.
In 2005, the couple spent $4 million on a townhouse. The house in which they live on the 19th floor of a tower that overlooks New York’s Central Park. In 2007, he spent $10 million over two transactions to buy a 27-acre property in Colorado. They listed it for sale in 2011 but couldn’t find a buyer.
Consistency
Seinfeld is well-known for his joke-making routine. At an early age, he had realized the fact that the only way by which he can become a top comedian was to be able to write better jokes. And the only way to be able to do that is to write a joke every day. He got hold of a wall calendar and every day he crossed one date after writing a new joke.
Jerry didn’t focus on making money but he focused on doing hard work every day. He made sure he didn’t miss a day when he didn’t practice writing jokes. He focused on polishing his skills to accomplish a huge goal.
He developed and nurtured his comic talent by dint of hard work, persistence, and daily grind over lots of years. He had the discipline and the mental toughness to be capable of pushing through when he didn’t feel like that. The lesson you can learn from his life is that you must step out of your comfort zone to make progress. This is where you need bravery. If you can muster up the courage, you can achieve any goal in the world.
Famous Quotations
“Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.” Jerry Seinfeld
“It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.” Jerry Seinfeld