A woman who spent $3 million on a wedding to a hedge fund millionaire with whom she shares a $10 million Manhattan apartment says that she does not care about money.
“I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t,” Chelsea Clinton told the UK Telegraph in an interview about the trajectory of her career. “That wasn’t the metric of success I wanted in my life.”
Clinton is the daughter of multi-millionaires Bill and Hillary Clinton, both of whom have had storied political careers.
“It is frustrating, because who wants to grow up and follow their parents?” Chelsea, 34, said in the interview. “I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents,” she said.
It is unclear whether Clinton meant to imply that she is not concerned with money while her political parents are.
While Clinton says she does not focus on money, it is certainly at the center of her life.
In 2010, she married former Goldman Sachs investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, who recently founded his own hedge fund.
Last year, the couple upgraded from a $4 million New York City apartment to one that cost more than $10 million.
Clinton also reportedly drew a hefty $600,000 annual salary from NBC News as a special correspondent.
The Clinton family’s wealth has been a hot topic lately as Hillary has been asked about it in several interviews. The former first lady is a likely 2016 presidential candidate and has been touring to promote her latest memoir, “Hard Choices.”
Clinton told ABC’s Diane Sawyer that she and Bill were “dead broke” after leaving the White House in 2001 because of massive legal bills as well as payments on their two houses and for Chelsea’s tuition to Stanford University and the University of Oxford.
In another recent interview, Clinton said that her and husband Bill’s wealth — estimated to be more than $100 million — is “unlike a lot of people who are truly well off.”
She said that the couple pays “ordinary income tax” on their earnings, most of which has come from lucrative speaking engagements.
Clinton was criticized after both comments for seeming to be out of touch with the American public.
In her interview with The Telegraph, Chelsea Clinton sought to explain why, instead of entering a political life, she has ventured in other directions, such as with a job she took as a hedge fund analyst and as a director at her parents’ charity, the Clinton Foundation.
“I’ve talked about this to my friends who are doctors and whose parents are doctors, or who are lawyers and their parents are lawyers,” she said.
“It’s a funny thing to realize I feel called to this work both as a daughter and also as someone who believes I have contributions to make.”