Before becoming one of the most recognizable faces in journalism, Anderson Cooper already had a claim to fame, being the son of the late Gloria Vanderbilt and a direct descendent of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the American business magnate who built his wealth in railroads and shipping. However, despite coming from a wealthy family, Cooper’s net worth comes primarily from his work as a broadcast journalist, not his inheritance. In fact, the CNN anchor once opened up about his family’s spending and how he was told not to expect a trust fund. “My mom’s made clear to me that there’s no trust fund,” Cooper told Howard Stern in a 2014 interview, per Business Insider. “There’s none of that, [and] I don’t believe in inheriting money. Who’s inherited a lot of money that has gone on to do things in their own life? From the time I was growing up,…
