American professional model, media personality, producer, actress, and businesswoman, Tyra Banks, shot into the limelight as a model when she was only 15 years old and has since transitioned to be known for many things. She was the first African-American woman to make it on the covers of GQ magazine and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
She has been a host of Dancing with the stars (DWS) since 2020, however, the supermodel is calling it quits to pursue her passion as an entrepreneur. She gave TMZ a hint while on her way out of Whole Foods in Santa Monica.
Banks also operated some businesses on the side while hosting DWS. One such business is the recently launched SMiZE and Dream ice cream; she told TMZ that her heart and her soul are in business. The actress proved this in her shopping cart, TMZ reported, showing the platform the goods she had just bought to do some taste testing for future ice cream flavors, underscoring the importance she attaches to research and development.
While her focus is now totally on building her business, Banks is not shutting the door on coming back to TV. According to her, her future role in TV will be more on the side of producing, not hosting.
She first went into entrepreneurship when she launched her own production, Ty Ty Baby Productions, now Bankable Productions, which is responsible for producing both the reality series, America’s Next Top Model, which first aired in 2003, and her daytime talk show, The Tyra Banks Show (2005–2010). Banks is also an executive producer of Dancing With the Stars and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model (today known as “BanX”).
Her success as an actress and a model, in addition to her various reality shows, tells that she has accumulated a substantial amount of money. Face2face Africa previously reported that she has an estimated net worth of $90 million in 2021.
Despite the fortune she has amassed, the executive producer has a frugal lifestyle; so frugal, her accountants once asked her to spend some money as she was just paying too many taxes.
“I was always more interested in experiences over things,” she said in an interview with MONEY. “Things didn’t make me happy. I saved, saved, saved. But I saved to a fault. About 15 years ago, my accountants pulled me aside, and they were like ‘Tyra. You’re not spending money. Nothing. You’re just giving it away to the government. You need to spend some damn money!’”
Banks then created an “F Account,” which stood for “Frivolous Account.” She spent it on what she called “stupid stuff.”
“In hindsight, I should have bought art and things that I appreciated,” she said. “I was getting private planes, nothing to show for it. It was a private plane kind of moment for me.”
Banks got her frugal lifestyle from her upbringing. When her parents divorced, she and her brother moved into a one-bedroom apartment with their mother, who slept on the living room floor while Tyra and her brother slept in the bedroom. A year later, they moved to a two-bedroom apartment, and then a three-bedroom apartment until Tyra was 20 years old, when she bought her first house. Her mom had at the time taught her all she needed to know about money.
