(Second of two parts)
Except for misers, the usual flow of finances runs this way: The larger the income, the bigger the expenditure. This is very true, especially among showbiz people, who are among the biggest spenders (taxpayers), who help prop up the economy.
Last Tuesday, I enumerated some of the basic expenses of showbiz celebrities. Below is the concluding portion of the list.
Food. We’re not talking of regular food here. It has to be diet. Dieting, however, doesn’t mean you will not eat and not spend. You are not supposed to starve if you plan to go on a (healthy) diet. You need food to be able to function.
But diet food is expensive. Celebrities go for the South Beach diet, which can make you poorer by as much as P10,000 a week — although it is convenient. The company where you order your food delivers to your doorstep the mostly all-protein meals daily — from breakfast to dinner. Fortunately, you cannot stay on this diet for long stretches of time and so you get off it and you save money.
However, dieting celebrities still have to shell out more than what you will spend normally on a regular meal. Brown rice is more expensive than the white variety — and so is whole wheat bread compared to the regular pan de sal. Fruits? Even the local varieties cost a fortune.
Personal trainer. Aside from paying a driver and a production assistant, young celebrities these days have to maintain a personal trainer if they want to look billboard-worthy. Woe to today’s movie/TV stars, the trend is to be lean, have cuts — plus six to eight packs. (I will do a column soon on personal trainers — and the celebrities who keep them.)
Accessories. Not only the women spend on accessories. Men do, too, nowadays and for some reason, the male (celebrity or not) of this generation has to have a collection of watches — even if they can only sport a single timepiece when they go out. (The last thing you want is to look like those Japanese soldiers during the last war who confiscated wristwatches from civilians and wore all on both arms at the same time — ask your elders, who lived through World War II.)
Maybe I’m just not into jewelry, but I can never understand the rationale behind collecting watches. You have to wind some on a daily basis and those that automatically run have batteries that leak when not used for a long period of time.
When I was starting in showbiz more than a decade ago, Aster Amoyo encouraged me to buy a diamond-studded Rolex. Had I heed her advice, the value of that would have already multiplied. It would have been a good investment. But no thanks. Although Rolex is a timepiece that lasts generations, I didn’t want to live life worrying about a watch getting stolen.
For women, I guess pieces of jewelry are a good investment because its value appreciates in time and are easier to dispose during emergency. It will always be easier to sell than real estate — tax-free at that.
Female celebrities today, however, can now enjoy those baubles without investing in them because some jewelry shops lend their pieces for special occasions — like an awards night, for example.
During the 2005 Film Academy of the Philippines awards night, I shared a table with Pops Fernandez, whose neck and earlobes shimmered with a king’s ransom in diamonds. A famous jewelry line lent those to her so that their gems could be photographed on a fashion icon like Pops.
I kidded her about how maybe she could consider running off to some obscure country in South America and disappear with the loot. Of course, she didn’t do that. For all you know, her mother, Dulce Lukban, must have bought those because she has exquisite taste when it comes to jewelry. Mothers know best and Dulce can tell a good piece when she sees one.
Makeup and cosmetics. While male celebrities can sport makeup without their gender getting questioned, it is the women who really spend a fortune getting their face painted. This is the reason why talk shows pay female talents more (if they give honoraria because not all do that). While the men make do with whoever is the makeup artist provided by the show, women sometimes have to spend on getting dolled up if they are picky. This can set them back financially by at least P2,000 for a brief TV appearance.
That’s quite a pittance considering the fact that the really top-notch makeup artists today charge anywhere between P50,000 to P80,000 per face for a pictorial.
Bags and shoes for women. I can never understand why the women of today spend hundreds of thousands of pesos for a bag and anywhere from P30,000 to P50,000 for a pair of Manolo Blanik or Jimmy Choo shoes. I guess it is girl thing.
They also reason out that Louis Vuitton is a good investment. Perhaps. I am not about to argue with women over that.
An odd assortment of donations. Whenever a family member or relative of a studio personnel/hanger-on dies or get sick, who do they first run to? The celebrities, of course, are required to make a substantial contribution since admittedly they get paid more than a production staffer.
Their co-workers, however, don’t realize that after subtracting miscellaneous expenses and taxes, there really isn’t much left from a celebrity’s income. (The entertainer’s tax scheme is different from other professions.)
Some young celebrities have become wiser and have started putting up a foundation in their name for tax purposes. Those who do not do this are in danger of ending up as charity cases themselves in the future.
For all those exorbitant talent fees that celebrities get, how come when their heyday is over we see a lot of them on Vicky Morales’ Wish Ko Lang?