Tiffany Haddish used her $80 000 'Girls Trip' pay cheque to pay off her mortgage because she feared becoming “homeless again”.
The 42-year-old comedienne bought a property with the money she made from the 2017 blockbuster - in which she starred as Dina - so that she and any heirs in the future would be financially secure.
She explained: “I started trying to figure out how to create. The fastest way to do it and the first way you should go about doing it is to buy some land.
“So before we even got into season 2 of ‘The Carmichael Show,’ I bought a house. Everybody told me I should wait, but I didn’t care. I just knew I was going to have to always make enough money to take care of me and the house, and that’s what I did.”
She added in an interview with Cosmopolitan: “Between that show’s next season, the ‘Keanu’ movie, and making sure I can live comfortably off of $500 a month, I was able to pay off half the house.
“The ‘Girls Trip’ check was the final cheque. People told me to spend it in other ways, but I used it to pay off the house because I was always afraid of being homeless again.”
Despite having significant wealth - with her net worth said to be around $6 million - the ‘Night School’ star always has her poor past at the back of her mind and continues to invest in land and property.
She added: “Now I have a surplus of money.
“But I’m still afraid of being poor again. Every movie I made, I would just buy another piece of land or a house.”
Haddish's friend and co-star Kevin Hart, 43, gave her $300 000 before her career took off because she was homeless and living out of her car.
The ‘Jumanji’ star first revealed he helped Haddish get her career off the ground in 2018, while they were promoting ‘Night School’.
Hart explained: "When I saw you I said you were talented, extremely talented, we hit it off, had a friendship. Within our friendship, I then found out some stuff about you ...
“Tiffany was actually homeless at the time, nobody knew but I found out. And because I'm such a good person - hence the last name, 'Hart' - I dug in my pocket and at the time I gave her all the money that I had and that money ended up doing a lot for you without me even knowing it."
Haddish added: “I used that money to put a down payment on an apartment and it got me a place to live and you taught me to make a list of goals of what I want out of my life, what I want to do in my career and I made that list and I have tackled that list and we are sitting here today, all the way in Europe.
“I feel like I'm doing big things! I've been trying to pay him back for years.”