Christy Carlson Romano is getting real about her financial journey.
In case you need a quick refresh, Christy started working for Disney when she was just a teenager back in the early '00s. You might remember Christy as the star of Even Stevens or the voice of Kim Possible.
In a new video posted to her YouTube channel, Christy explained, "How I blew all my Disney money."
View this video on YouTube
"I really regret not investing my money wisely — I didn't get a house. I didn't take any money and store it away," Christy began. Although she did start to attend college with some of the money to minimize her student debt, she left a year and a half in.
In particular, Christy said that she was surrounded by people — including someone she was dating — who made her feel as if she wasn't good enough: "I felt like if I could just buy certain things, I would feel better, or if I just lived a certain lifestyle, I would be closer to that joy of feeling accepted and a lot less alone because I felt really dumb for not knowing about my money, and I never really made peace with that. Even to this day, there's nothing I can really do about the fact that money came and went."
"When I was 21, I had a record deal. I had a book deal. In that year, I made just about a million dollars — in that same year, I spent it," Christy continued. "It's really sad."
"My biggest thing about child actors — you aren't told that the work is going to slow down. In fact, I was told the opposite, specifically by my mom, some of my team, even my money manager at the time. 'Oh don't worry, the residuals come; you're going to keep making money.' It's interesting, it bred a sort of contempt in me. It's a tremendous amount of pressure, and I think I self-destructed."
Christy then says that she started doing movies purely for financial reasons, which took the joy out of her work. "There was a specific movie that I actually did that I'm not proud of," Christy continued, referring to Mirrors 2. "I did a nude scene. I had never thought in a million years that I would ever do something like this — I was America's sweetheart, morally sound in my mind. I believed in the Disney magic; I still do. I felt so exploited, marked, and horrible."
