Fame & Fortune: Rita Rudner Comedian-writer lives in her money
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Rita Rudner: I'm doing a few things for my book, but very few. My whole family came to New York with me for three weeks in September, a combination vacation and work. And I have one gig for the Atlanta Jewish Book festival. But I'm very into being a mom and staying home, which is what working in Las Vegas offers.

Bankrate: You seem to be doing very well in Vegas. So many comics I've interviewed never learned how to handle money until very late.

Rita Rudner: And I'm one of them; that's why I married my husband. He's very smart, and he does all that. I know I should learn it and do it, but I don't, because everything is going very well. We've been married for 18 years, and when we met I was renting a studio apartment for $500 a month and he had bought a small condo in Australia. Now, we have a penthouse, a beach house and a golf house. So he's doing OK. I'm letting him do what he does.

Bankrate: And what is it he does?

Rita Rudner: He produces my shows, and he handles all the financial areas of the business. He's also creative. He was in the Cambridge Footlights, and he has a comedy background, so I bounce everything off of him when I write. My act, I keep to myself, that's between me and the audience. But we've written screenplays together. We wrote "Peter's Friends," and "Weekend in the Country," and about 20 other screenplays together. We're a team.

Bankrate: When you get to the level of being a Vegas regular, does the business end of it get a lot more complicated?

Rita Rudner: It is a lot more complicated, of course. The more money you have, the more people want to tell you what to do with it. There are a lot of choices out there, and you don't want to make the wrong choice. So it does get more complicated. We're not that savvy at investing, so we tend to play it safe. Instead of trying to make money with our money, we continue to try to make money by making money, and not losing money. If we don't lose it, we think it's a success. "We didn't lose it today, oh good. We're doing great."

Bankrate: What kind of investing do you do?

Rita Rudner: We own lots of houses. We just bought a beach house. That's our big investment. We just said, as the Realtor said, "If not now, when?" And we said, "You're right -- if not now, when? This is the house we want. It's very expensive, and we're going to buy it." It might not have been the best investment we could have made with that amount of money, but we love it. And I've had the same accountant in Manhattan since I was a dancer on Broadway, so for about 30 years we've had the same accountant. He said, "You know, you have a lot invested in property." I said, "Yeah, but we live in the houses, and we love them." So instead of putting it in the bank, we live in them. We live in our money.

Bankrate: What does the accountant want you to do with it?