How The Clintons Have Made $230 Million Since Leaving The White House

Less than a week before the Clintons left the White House in 2001, they bought a replacement house 15 minutes down the road for $2.85 million. It was a pricy purchase for a couple who had more than $1 million in legal debt and a net worth of nearly nothing at the time. But the Clintons had little reason to worry—they were poised to make a fortune. Over the next 15 years, they earned more than $230 million before taxes.
The money flowed in fast. Bill delivered the first of hundreds of high-paying speeches on February 5, 2001, less than three weeks after he left the presidency, talking to Morgan Stanley in New York for $125,000. The firm got a bargain. Bill eventually raised his average rate to roughly $225,000 per speech, in some cases charging $500,000, according to disclosure documents Hillary filed as a senator and cabinet member. In 2005, Bill even charged $125,000 for giving a video conference from New York to a group called HSM Italia. All told, he raked in about $100 million from speaking from 2001 to 2014.
The former president also made a fortune writing books. In 2004, he published his memoir My Life, which became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. From 2001-05, Clinton listed his speaking and writing as a joint business on his tax return, so it’s difficult to tell exactly how much he made from books versus speaking during that period. But the revenues for his speaking engagements are detailed in annual disclosure reports Hillary filed as a senator. Taking those revenues and figuring that his speaking business produced similar margins from 2001-05 to those it made in 2006 and 2007, Forbes estimated how much of his earnings came from each source during the five years in which they are listed as a combined business on the Clintons’ tax returns. According to our calculations, Bill Clinton made an estimated $29 million from writing from 2001-05 and banked another $9 million from 2006 to 2014. The Clintons did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Bill made money in business as well, charging more than $15 million to serve as an advisor to investment firm Yucaipa, led by billionaire Ron Burkle, from 2003 to 2008. Clinton declared a loss of about $725,000 when he disposed of his Yucaipa partnership in 2008. The next year he began consulting for two other companies, Shangri-La Industries and Wasserman Investments. Over two years, Clinton collected $2.5 million from Shangri-La Industries and $3.1 million from Wasserman Investments.
In 2010, Clinton added his most lucrative consulting client, for-profit college company Laureate Education. Over five years, Laureate paid Clinton a total of $16 million. The former president also consulted for another for-profit education company, GEMS Education, from 2011 to 2014, earning $6 million over that span. In total, Bill made a sum of $27 million from consulting, in addition to the millions he got from from Yucaipa.