Fame & Fortune: Magician Penn Jillette
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Bankrate: So even with everything else, that's still the bread and butter?

Penn Jillette: In terms of money, I don't know. But in terms of my life, yeah. "Bread and butter" has a mercantile feel to it, that's where you really make your money, but my life is "The Penn & Teller Show." It's stronger than bread and butter. In other words, if "The Penn & Teller Show" starting making me a quarter of what it does now, and the radio show started making 10 times what it does now, I don't think I would stop the live show because there's more money to be made in radio. It's what I've been doing since I was juggling in talent shows when I was 15. It's what I do. I'm a talker and I'm a juggler.

Bankrate: So out of all the areas of business you have, is any one your "bread and butter?"

Penn Jillette: If you're talking about where you make your money, I'll ask you a question about where you make money. What is the Rolling Stones' job? What do they do for a living?

Bankrate: At this point? Tour?

Penn Jillette: No, what do they do for a living -- where's the money comes from? They make no money touring.

Bankrate: Music publishing?

Penn Jillette: No. There's very little money in publishing.

Bankrate: Then you've got me. I'm stumped.

Penn Jillette: T-shirt sales. What the Rolling Stones do for a living is T-shirt sales. It's very important in any business negotiation to know what business you're really in. If you look at my money and break it all down, take [our show on Showtime] and the radio show and the books and "The Aristocrats," and you look over the past five years, what I do for a living is, I am a Las Vegas entertainer. And I'm real proud of that. There are very few people in show business who can say what they do for a living is actually do shows. One of the things happening with the recording industry is that live performance is a more and more viable way to make a living. If you have a show that people can only see live, if you can't see "Penn & Teller" electronically, then you're really safe, because the distribution of live shows hasn't really changed too much in a thousand years, whereas the distribution of music over the past 100 years undergoes a pretty big change periodically -- lately a huge revolution every five years.

Bankrate: When people talk about technology, it's often said that you can never really substitute for the human experience, that visceral experience.

Penn Jillette: Because no one's trying to. That's the funny thing -- it's a straw-man argument. People who are doing fabulous technology are not saying, what we have to do is get rid of that pesky live stuff. Old technology never really goes away, and that's why technology is 100 percent good. There are still people riding horses. We didn't lose any of the good of horse and buggy. We kept all of that. I am someone who believes the bigger the population, and the more technology, the better we do. The 300 millionth human being will be in the U.S. soon, and that is nothing but good, because back when the population was in the single-digit millions, if you wanted to have a life in show business you had to please 1 percent of the population, maybe even a little higher. Now, you can please two-tenths of 1 percent of the population and have an incredibly successful career in show biz. In fact, you can please 0.001 percent of the population, and have a very successful, upper-middle-class life.

Bankrate: How do you prefer to invest -- real estate, stocks, something else?

Penn Jillette: With my business manager, I am the one who spends the least money. I don't play the stock market at all, I am as conservative as you can possibly be. I will only invest in myself. My business manager has been told, "Imagine I'm a Midwest school marm. Make everything as safe as possible." I don't want my daughter to lack for anything because I was trying to make money off Microsoft. I'm a libertarian, which means as far right as you can go on money, and as far left as you can go on sex.

Bankrate: So are you in money markets or ...

Penn Jillette: I don't even know. I have a business manager who's very rich and who has clients who are richer than me, which is the most important thing you can do. Make sure your business manager is filthy rich, because then he won't steal from you. And, make sure he has clients richer than you so he has another choice.