Whether it’s a sprawling estate in the suburbs complete with a pool or a penthouse apartment overlooking Manhattan, luxurious real estate is the ultimate symbol of success. But the hefty mortgage that comes with it will leave you trapped chasing paychecks, Hollywood icon Quentin Tarantino warns.
And it’s the best financial advice he once gave fellow American director and collaborator, Eli Roth.
“Quentin told me, ‘Don’t buy a house until you can afford to completely pay for it outright,’” the Cabin Fever and Hostel filmmaker recalls to Fortune, adding that many others in the industry use their first million-dollar paycheck to get a mortgage with a $200,000 down payment.
“But you basically become an employee of your house. So every decision that you make becomes, ‘Can I pay my mortgage? Can I pay my mortgage?’ Not, ‘Is this best for my career?’” Roth explains. “Everyone gets trapped by living a certain lifestyle.”
“He goes, ‘I didn’t buy a house until Jackie Brown. Everyone else thought I was going to buy one after Pulp Fiction. I waited because I didn’t want to get stuck being an employee of my house—and then I didn’t have to worry about it.
“‘Don’t buy a house as soon as you’re successful, hold on to your money.’”
Roth, who has recently launched his own production company, The Horror Section, took Tarantino’s words of wisdom seriously and didn’t become a homeowner until he was 35, after the success of Hostel: Part II.
“Hostel is a movie that cost $3.8 million. It made $80 million at the box office. It was a massive DVD sale. And all I could hear was Quentin’s words in my head: ‘Don’t become an employee of your house.‘
“So I just kept my rental, and I went back to work,” Roth tells Fortune, adding that he finally got on the property ladder in the summer of 2007.
“I’d made three successful movies, and I knew that I was going to have checks coming in, and I wouldn’t have to take a job,” he recalls. “I didn’t direct again for five years.” That is, until the offer to work with Tarantino on Inglourious Basterds—where the budget was limited and Roth tried his hand at acting in the role of Sgt. Donny Donowitz.
“I went from making millions on a movie so that I could then go to Germany and be paid $65,000 but have the greatest experience of my life and create this iconic character,” Roth adds.
“And of course, acting under Tarantino is what made me a completely different director and enabled me to work with great actors, Cate Blanchett, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis … But that was only because I was careful; I waited until I had three movies done that were successful, and I bought a house that was in my budget range.
“If I was stuck as an employee of my house, I would have had to take some directing job that I wouldn’t want to do, and then I would have missed the opportunity of a lifetime.”
Despite his continued career success, Roth kept that home until a year ago—moving for a home with fewer stairs in the same neighborhood and price range, to accommodate life with a newborn.
Despite being worth some $168 billion, Buffett proudly calls himself “cheap” for never having upsided his property—but he “wouldn’t trade it for anything,” owing to the memories of raising three kids there.
