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CNN News anchor, Anderson Cooper is one of the most recognizable faces in media and journalism. The son of the late heiress Gloria Vanderbilt and writer/actor Wyatt Emory Cooper, the New York native has always been in the public eye, making public appearances with his mother as a young boy and eventually even having his own modeling career in his teen years.

The Yale University graduate became interested in journalism in 1988, after his older brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, died by suicide by jumping from the family’s Manhattan penthouse.

Cooper began his career interning for the CIA before moving on to networks like Channel One, ABC, and eventually landing at CNN. Though Cooper is from a wealthy background and has his own massive net worth. He has described himself as being rather cheap.

Anderson Cooper’s net worth

From his CNN show, Anderson Cooper 360, the openly gay journalist makes an annual salary of $12 million and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Cooper is worth an astounding $200 million.

In addition to his Emmy Award-winning journalism, Cooper has earned money by authoring two books. His 20o6 memoir, Dispatches from the Edge and the 2017 book that he co-authored with his late mother, The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss.

Anderson Cooper did not inherit a lot of money from his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt

When Vanderbilt passed away on June 17, 2019, it was reported that she’d left the majority of her estate to Cooper. At the time, it was reported that the late socialite’s estate was worth upward of $200 million.

“I don’t know what the amount is going to be but it’s not some huge estate,” Cooper explained on The Howard Stern Show. “I think the New York Post put out a thing early on it was $200 million [and] I was like wow. 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.”

Cooper went on to reveal that he paid his mother back for paying for his college expenses and a great deal more. In the end, he told Stern that he would be inheriting significantly less than $200 million. “I think the final estate hasn’t been done,” he revealed. “I’m guessing it will be maybe a million and a half, two million dollars.”

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Anderson Cooper Reveals What His Mother Gloria Vanderbilt’s Estate Is Really Worth

Anderson Cooper calls himself cheap

While Cooper’s mother was freer with her money, the new father has called himself very frugal. In fact, he recently revealed that his newborn son, Wyatt has been wearing hand-me-down clothes. Baby Wyatt is being dressed in all of Andy Cohen’s son’s old clothing.

“My son is entirely wearing hand-me-downs from Andy Cohen’s son,” Cooper explained to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “I’m inherently cheap, I like a good value. First, it’s a pandemic, I was planning on kind of going shopping, which I hate to do. And so, yeah, he just gave me all the clothes. I wanted my son to be a Depression-era child who grows up wearing hand-me-down clothes.”

We don’t blame Cooper at all, babies grow at the speed of light.

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