BUSINESS

Fame & Fortune: Ben Stein
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Bankrate: Your life took a pretty dramatic turn when you hooked up with Norman Lear. How did you come to help invent the late, great "Fernwood Tonight"?

Ben Stein: I was writing about television for the Wall Street Journal and became friends with Norman Lear. I helped him sell "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" by writing about it and after that, it was all downhill. When I went to work for him, he and I had a great relationship and I was able to help him get into the idea of having Martin Mull be what I called "Johnny Carson on acid." "Fernwood Tonight" is still a cult hit and it still works very well. It's a wonderful show.

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Bankrate: That must have been a dramatic bump in pay for you?

Ben Stein: Especially having been a civil servant. I was paid $600 a week to consult for one hour a week with Norman Lear, so I thought I was the richest man in the world. I loved it. The only bad part about Hollywood is not working. Working in Hollywood is bliss, not working is torture.

Bankrate: A little sleeper of a movie called "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" took care of that, right?

Ben Stein: That launched my career. I had no idea that that was going to be so successful. I had no idea that that day was going to change my life, but it did. I was teaching at Pepperdine. In fact, John Hughes knew I was a teacher and that's why he asked me to do a scene in which I play a teacher. But I improvised the whole scene. It was totally extemporaneous. Not one word of it was written down. They just asked me to come over and do it because they knew I was a funny guy. I have worked steadily since then.

Bankrate: How do you rate yourself as a money manager?

Ben Stein: Not very good. I have managed always to have quite a lot of money around but that's mostly because I earn a lot. But I've made lots of mistakes. There's a lot of real estate I wish I had bought, there's a lot of real estate that I sold way before I should have sold it and there's a lot of stock, especially Berkshire Hathaway, that I wish I had bought more of. I have a little bit and I bought it very cheap when I could have bought more of it, and that was a serious mistake. I'm going to be 60 pretty soon and I can't really speculate as much as I'd like to, I have to keep in a fairly conservative mode, so I think my opportunities for any really big investment gains are gone. But I will never be poor, unless something happens dramatically that I can't foresee. I've always saved a lot, I've never had any investment catastrophes, and I'm very liquid. I planned for my retirement probably when I was about 13 years old, so I've always had a fair amount of retirement funds, plus my parents left me money, so I'll be all right.

Bankrate: What were your best investments?

Ben Stein: I had Berkshire Hathaway starting when it was $900. I was an early partner in the Hard Rock Café chain and made a huge hit on that. I was an early partner in a limited real estate partnership here called Los Angeles Athletic Club Company that has probably gone up at least 20 times since I bought it and still pays fantastic dividends. I think I'm way, way, way above average as an investor, but nowhere near the level of the really big-time super-good ones. Not even close.

Bankrate: Are you frugal like your father, or do you like to spend?

Ben Stein: Oh, I love to spend money. I have a lot of houses and I have a lot of servants at those houses. And we do a lot of traveling and we eat out a lot A LOT and spend a REALLY lot on restaurant meals. Now a lot of that is reimbursed, but by no means all of it.

Bankrate: Thanks to your book, we now know exactly how to ruin our financial lives. Any advice on how to succeed financially?

Ben Stein: There are three smart things you should do. One, save right now. Start immediately, start today. Two, start thinking about your retirement right away, even if you're 20 years old. Three, buy your first house, and when you've got that in control financially, buy a second house, then a third house, then invest in broadly diversified mutual funds like index funds, but prepare for your retirement by buying variable annuities. Variable annuities, especially the newest kind where there are no surrender fees or large sales charges and they're guaranteed to grow, say, 4 to 5 percent each year no matter how the stock market does. Those are great things.

Bankrate: Have you been successful in passing along your financial savvy to your teenage son Tommy?

Ben Stein: No, my son assumes that I will leave him so much money that he will never have to think about money. I've told him a million times he's wrong, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.