Why Joanna Gaines Planned Elaborate Birthday Parties She Couldn’t Afford
Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines are now worth millions, but the HGTV couple wasn’t always wealthy. Recently, Joanna released her memoir, The Stories We Tell: Every Piece of Your Story Matters, and she detailed her past financial problems. At one point, she was planning elaborate birthday parties for her kids when she couldn’t afford them. Here’s why.
The ‘Fixer Upper’ couple dealt with mountains of debt in their early years of marriage
Chip and Joanna Gaines dealt with serious debt before making it big with Fixer Upper. According to Insider, the couple didn’t have much money following their two-week honeymoon in 2003. Chip and Joanna moved into a vacated home they were renting out in Waco, Texas. Chip started renovating the home, and Joanna had just begun getting into design work.
Their financial troubles didn’t end there. At one point, Chip and Joanna were $100,000 in debt after starting a residential-development project. Thankfully, they could get past the hard times by working together.
Chip credits their joint passion for hard work and winning. “We’re passionate about what we do; we love waking up in the morning and giving it our best bet. And the second thing is, we hate to lose,” Chip said. “When we woke up some mornings, realizing we don’t have the money to pay back some of these debts that we had accumulated over the years, we realized we were going to have to be very creative, very quickly, and really fight for this. We didn’t want to quit, we didn’t want to declare bankruptcy — some of those things were just literally not options for us.”
Joanna Gaines planned elaborate parties for her kids when she couldn’t afford them
Joanna Gaines’ new memoir details how she would still throw elaborate parties for her kids despite having little money to do so. According to USA Today, she wanted her kids to have huge parties so others wouldn’t know how much she and Chip were financially struggling.
“When that fear is driving you, then you (might) fake it and pretend like, ‘OK, I have these elaborate birthday parties even though I can’t afford any of the stuff,’” the star noted. “The stuff I was internally processing during those times when things were really hard for us; we were growing a business that was young. We had young kids.” Joanna also noted she and Chip were in a home with a high mortgage they could barely afford.
Despite past failures, Joanna’s happy that she got to learn and grow from those experiences. “It just means, OK, well that didn’t work,” she said. “What can I learn from that and try on the next run?”
How much are Chip and Joanna Gaines worth in 2022?
According to Parade, Chip and Joanna Gaines’ net worth is about $50 million in 2022.
Not only did they make millions from HGTV, but their Magnolia brand also brought in a fortune. They have their Magnolia Network, Magnolia Realty, and their lifestyle brand, Hearth & Hand, at Target, which just scratches the surface. Magnolia Market in Waco, Texas, has become a destination for Gaines family fans.
The couple recently renovated Cottonland Castle, earning them several TV episodes. This certainly won’t be the last major project fans see Chip and Joanna embark on.
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