Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen Are Insanely Rich But Stingy In This One Area
Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen together make one of the world’s most well-known power couples. From the outside, they appear to have it all: success, fame, wealth, health, and beauty.
Thanks to Brady’s successful football career, and Bündchen’s equally successful career as a model, the pair has more money than most would know what to do with. So what do they do with it? Unfortunately, though they have often made the news for their charitable giving, they may not be as generous as they seem.
How much are Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady worth?
Jointly, Bündchen and Brady are worth an estimated $580 million. That’s over half a billion dollars.
Individually, the two each bring a lot to the table. Brady is the 4th highest-paid football player of all time, amassing $217.2 million over his 19 years in the NFL. Additionally, he makes about $8 million a year in endorsements.
Bündchen, for her part, is one of the world’s top-earning models. Even though she has since retired from the runway, she still earned $10 million in 2018 for her endorsements. When she was still on the catwalk in 2014, she made $47 million in a single year. That’s $128,000 a day, a salary that many will never see in a year, let alone a single day.
This is not to say it wasn’t hard work. Bündchen nearly lost her life due to the stress of it all. She told ABC Nightline‘s Robin Roberts in a 2018 interview: “I was in a hamster wheel going 500 miles an hour.”
She later shared that she had contemplated suicide. “Life was like… I was trapped, and I couldn’t breathe,” she shared with tears in her eyes. After this harrowing episode, she knew she needed to reassess her priorities. This led her to some self-reflection and the start of her regular meditation and yoga practices.
Is Gisele Bündchen as charitable as the media claims?
Bündchen is a media darling when it comes to charitable giving, consistently making headlines and lists for “most charitable celebrities.” She reportedly gave over $1.5 million to the Red Cross after the earthquakes in Haiti and has given to or been a spokesperson for a number of other charitable causes over the years ranging from RED to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
When it comes to her own charity, however, the well of generosity seems a little dry. According to a recent report by the New York Post, the non-profit she started and now jointly runs with Brady, Luz Foundation, isn’t doing much in the way of giving beyond its coffers.
Despite the donation of $432,925 by Gisele, Inc. to the foundation, over $300,000 of it is yet unspent. What has the foundation spent money on? Well, it gave $22,000 to a charity that throws big galas in New York. Other donations are too paltry to even mention, with under a thousand dollars each for various environmental projects.
What charities are Tom Brady involved in?
Brady has a fund of his own, Change the World Foundation Trust, which, like Luz Foundation also isn’t highly funded by himself. The trust receives the majority of its funding from other sources, such as the $500,000 it received from Best Buddies International in 2016.
Brady donated just over $100,000 to the trust of his own money. It’s worth noting that $50,000 of the charity’s funds went to his old high school, which while generous, is hardly changing the “world.”
In December 2019, Brady stepped down from his role with Best Buddies after 16 years saying in a statement: “This organization has become a part of my life. I love meeting the inspiring buddies at events, seeing their smiles, and hearing them talk about how Best Buddies has changed their lives for the better by helping them make friends at school and find meaningful jobs in their local communities.”
To be fair to Brady and Bündchen, there does seem to be a higher burden of scrutiny on celebrities that appear to be charitable, than ones that make no effort at all. The concerning numbers in regards to their own foundations, Brady and Bündchen have done a lot over the years, often attending events and speaking out on causes they care about, which is never a bad thing.
Let’s just hope in the future, they set a better example when it comes to the management of their own foundations.
