Cher came back from owing $270,000 in back taxes, only to wind up broke again. 6 points about money from her new memoir.

Theron Mohamed

Sat, Nov 23, 2024, 11:07 AM 4 min read

Cher on stage in Cleveland, Ohio being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame — Cher was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in October 2024.Kevin Kane/Getty Images

Cher came back from owing $270,000 in back taxes only to wind up broke again years later.
The star makes several striking points about money in her memoir published this week.
Cher says she overspent, lacked financial acumen, and benefited from owning real estate.

Cher has made and lost several fortunes in her career. The "Believe" singer, who shot to fame with hits including "I Got You Babe" with her ex-husband Sonny Bono, reflects on her financial triumphs and troubles in her new book, "Cher: The Memoir, Part One."

Here are six points she makes about money:

1. Feeling safe

Cher's parents struggled financially, so she often had to give things up she liked. When she made it big, the performer found comfort in having backup products.

"I was so insecure about becoming poor again that I started buying two of a few key household items in case we needed to replace things that had worn out," she writes.

"There was no logic to owning two electric frying pans or two hair dryers — I'd have been a broke housewife with great hair — but it made me feel better because since childhood I'd been accustomed to losing what I had or being forced to trade down to a worse situation."

2. Overspending

"We're broke, Cher. We owe the IRS $270,000 in back taxes and we don't have the money," Bono said to Cher in the late 1960s, in her telling.

sonny cher — Cher's divorce from Sonny Bono was finalized in 1975.CBS via Getty Images

Cher realized that she'd spent almost precisely that amount on her dream house. "That's how people in the movie industry or music business get into such trouble," she writes.

"You come from nothing and suddenly you've got all this money and you're doing Ed Sullivan and people are screaming for you all over the world and you think it's gonna last forever," she continued. "Then one day it dries up and you realize you never had any backup."

In 1980, Cher was on the brink of declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy when she was saved by a man who'd bought some apartment buildings from her — he decided to pay in full instead of in installments.

"Thank you, God," she writes. "I vowed never to overextend myself like that again. (Not that it stuck—I've been overextending myself in a million ways my whole life!)."