What Martha Stewart Really Spends Her Massive Fortune On
Martha Stewart's net worth may not start with a "B" anymore, but she certainly isn't hard up, either. Au contraire, even after legal woes and losing her company, Martha managed to resurrect her career, and today, she's said to be worth a whopping $400 million. As for what she spends it all on, Martha has made no secret of the fact that she loves investing in her properties and a whole lot of animals. Houses and horses and peafowl, oh my!
Martha has owned a number of homes over the years, which undoubtedly cost her a pretty penny. Granted, the East Hamptons home she bought in the early '90s set her back just $1.7 million. As she shared in "Martha," she'd specifically asked her real estate agent to find her the most run-down home on a nice street, which likely played a role in the price. Even so, Martha put her all into it, spending more than a year renovating the home, which likely wasn't cheap. We'd guess it probably paid off, though, as she ended up selling it in 2021 for close to 10 times what she bought it for. That would be an eye-watering $16.5 million.
As for the properties Martha still owns, those include the New York City apartment she shares with her only child, daughter Alexis Stewart (and which they dropped $12.3 million on), as well as the well-known Skylands in Maine (a home specifically for the warmer months), and her primary residence, Bedford Farm in New York. Again, there's no question that Martha spends a ton of money on the properties' upkeep. Gardening, in particular, is a major priority for her — no surprise there. Like we said, though, Martha's pets are also hugely important to her.
Martha's primary estate is full of interesting animals
Martha Stewart has spoken on a number of occasions about keeping her Bedford Farm grounds full of animals — animals, we might add, that aren't cheap to care for. For starters, there are her equine pets. As she wrote in one "Martha Up Close & Personal" post, "I have 10 residents in my stable — four Friesians, a Fell pony, and five Sicilian donkeys." The horse family is notoriously expensive to care for — The Farm House estimates that it can cost as much as $8000 per horse, per year to house, feed, and care for them. It's no surprise Stewart refers to them as "a huge responsibility." Even so, she's made it clear they're worth the cost. "It brings me great joy to know that they are happy and in the best possible health," she wrote. Money well spent, then!
Other than the equids, Stewart wrote in a November 2024 blog post that she also had "dogs, kittens, horses, donkeys, chickens, geese, and my peafowl." That still wasn't all, though. In a 2019 appearance on "Today," she revealed that her animal menagerie included no less than 45 canaries and several flocks of chickens. Summing it up, she mused, "I have, oh, hundreds and hundreds of pets."
If the sheer number of animals under Stewart's care (which, BTW, she's keen on increasing) comes at a cost, she certainly isn't bothered by it. Multimillionaire status aside, she told "Today," "I really care about them, I really take very good care of them, and they take good care of me, too." It's no surprise, then, that she joked that friends have told her they'd want to be reincarnated as one of her pets. TBH fact, we feel the same way!