Updated on February, 2024.

Martha Stewart reminds me of my mom; however, Martha Stewart’s net worth is around $400 million in 2024. My mom’s net worth is not so much, but still, there is a resemblance in the G-rated homemaker way.

One time my mom was offered a drink at a dinner party we attended together. She was a teetotaler. She only accepted the drink because the host said it tasted like a Peppermint Pattie. A Peppermint Pattie, her favorite candy, is a large chocolate mint.

The host failed to tell her that he made the drink with two ounces of vodka, one ounce of peppermint schnapps, and one-half ounce of crème de cacao. She thought it tasted delicious, and then, she got completely wasted. When she stole the silver butter knife by slipping it into her purse because it was so “cute,” it was time to take her home.

Martha Stewart’s Net Worth

I tell you this story because something like that had to happen for Martha Stewart to go to jail for lying to investigators about a stock sale. She got a tip one of the stocks she owned was going to tank. She sold it based on insider trading advice to avoid losing about $45,000.

Martha Stewart went to jail for five months, followed by five more months of house arrest and two-year probation because she lied to investigators about getting the tip. When I saw my mom using the butter knife and asked her about it, she lied too. Then, I gave her the rest of the setup that I had pilfered to complete the dinner set. What can I say? Kleptomania runs in the family.

Martha Stewart was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and lying to the investigators. All because of a little fib, a white lie, a misstatement, a faux pas, as it is called, which everyone on the planet has done since they were five years old. Good ole Martha took it on the chin and bravely faced incarceration. Her fans were shocked! Not that Martha told a fish story about selling a loser stock, but that the nasty Feds put her in jail for it.

Doing ‘Hard Time’ Martha Stewart Style

Forbes reported in 2004 that upon the jury giving a guilty conviction, Martha Stewart’s net worth dropped from $420 million to around $325 million, decreasing by $85 million. The Chicago Tribune reported that in prison, Martha Stewart used the time to invent innovative ways to do microwave cooking that she shared with fellow inmates.

Ex-Jailbird Martha Stewart

***Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg***
*Image Source: People.com*

Well, here we are, more than a decade later. K-Mart, who sold housewares designed by Martha Stewart is failed miserably, but Martha is doing just fine, thank you. Martha Stewart’s net worth is about the same as it has always been.

Going to jail did not derail Martha Stewart’s career. She became cooler after that. Being an ex-con added to her street creed, and she became close friends with Snoop Dogg. Stewart does not smoke marijuana but admitted to getting a contact high by being around Snoop Dog, who smokes constantly.

Martha made a recipe of pot brownies for Snoop Dogg, which is made with THC-infused oil substituted for the regular oil in the recipe. Try the recipe for Martha Louise Stewart's "To-Die-For" Brownies.

How Did Martha Stewart Get Rich?

As a child, she started early, earning money as a babysitter. Then, she became a model and appeared in television commercials from the age of 15. The luxury company, Chanel, hired her frequently.

As a young woman, she became a stockbroker in New York, making six-figure a year when she was just 24 years old. This is one of the reasons why the Feds slammed her for insider-trading, thinking she should have known better from working as a stockbroker.

In the 1970s, she started a home-based catering business with a partner due to her love of cooking. As soon as the business became successful, she bought out her partner.

She had a lucky break in 1977 when at one of the events she catered she met the head of Crown Publishing (a Random House subsidiary), Alan Mirker. He agreed to publish her first cookbook called Entertaining. It sold over 625,000 copies.

In the 1980s, she published many cookbooks for the Random House Group and became a household name by promoting her cookbooks on popular talk shows such a Larry King Tonight and the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Throwback Thursdays: Oprah Winfrey Helps make a Tomato Cobbler Crust - Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart Living Magazine

In the 1990s, she got a deal with Time Inc. to produce the Martha Stewart Living magazine. More than a quarter-million subscribers signed up for the first issue and the subscriber base grew quickly to more than two million.

The quarterly magazine became a monthly based on its massive popularity.

The Big Business Move

Martha decided to own all the rights to her magazine, so in 1997 she borrowed $85 million to buy out Time Inc. She formed Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia to hold all ownership rights.

Two years later she took Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia public with an IPO. This made her a billionaire temporarily with the ownership of 70% of the company. The stock market had a major correction in 2000 due to the Internet bubble burst. This dragged all the sky-high valuations of companies way down.

Would You Do It?

Like the inserts that appears in Martha Stewart Living magazine, I want us to take a brief interlude and test your ethical standards against mine.

If you invested in a biopharmaceutical company that had a drug for cancer treatment that was about to be approved by the FDA and your stockbroker called you to tell you to sell the shares because the FDA would announce the drug approval was denied. Would you sell your shares?

If you answered, “hell yes!” you are honest. If you said no, you are lying, and join me and Martha as well.

That is what happened to Martha in 2001. She owned shares in ImClone, which was seeking FDA approval for a pharmaceutical called Erbitux. It failed to get approval and the stock price got hammered.

One of ImClone’s founders, Dr. Samuel Waksal, got charged with insider-trading violations for telling family and friends to sell before the FDA announcement. This investigation triggered an inquiry into the sale of about 4,000 shares owned by Martha Stewart. Her shares were sold the day before the FDA announcement. Stewart’s stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, was a friend of Dr. Waksal.

So, I ask you once again - Would you sell the stock or hold it knowing it was going to tank and you will lose about $45,000 the next day? Imagine that I am a Fed, and I pressure you to admit to “Tell the truth!” would you lie about it to cover what you did?

I would have sold those shares also. When the Feds asked me about it, I would have remained silent. Almost all Caucasian white-collar criminals get off by going in front of a sympathetic judge.

Sweet Martha did not know how to work the system because she was the epitome of white privilege and never even had to think about it. Now that she counts Snoop Dogg as one of her dear friends, he will teach her how to handle the Feds more appropriately if such an entrapment event ever happens again.

{Disclaimer; I do not own any share in any companies is mention in this article, so sorry Feds,” as James Cagney used to say, “You got nothing on me, copper!”}

The Funny Money Stock Market

Frankly, I think the Feds just attacked Martha Stewart to use her for publicity of a high-profile celebrity that they put in the slammer. From my point of view, it was, as Shakespeare would say, “Much Ado About Nothing” All over lying about a transaction to save a lousy $45,000. In case you do not already know, the stock market is all funny money that is not at all in touch with any form of practical reality.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (stock symbol: MSO) went public in October 1999. The opening price of $18 ran up to $38 per share on the first trading day. At this share price, Martha Stewart's net worth went over $1 billion. With this success, Martha Stewart became the first female self-made billionaire in America.

This was right before the Internet bubble burst that caused the stock market to crash in 2000. By February 2002, the share price of MSO dropped below the IPO price and hit a low of $16 per share.

When Martha went to jail in 2004 with a net worth of around $350 million, to everyone’s surprise, the share price went up, not down.

Martha Stewart became the first female billionaire to gain billionaire status for the second time while she was incarcerated. That must have made some interesting jailhouse conversations with her homies!

In an interview with Katie Couric, Martha Stewart said her jail time was horrific, and the only people whom she thinks should be in jail are convicted murderers. In typical Martha Stewart fashion, she described her five months in minimum security with prison guards and locked doors as “nasty.” No one remembered to put the toilet seat down because there are no toilet seats in jail.

The thought of neat-freak Martha Stewart in any form of lockdown with the kind of food they serve that you are expected to eat with a spork (a plastic combination spoon and fork) is a bit revolting to anyone with refined tastes.

After becoming a billionaire for the second time, six months after she got out and was free of house arrest, the share price of her company went down by 47%, bringing Martha Stewart’s net worth back down to a measly $500 million.

Martha Stewart’s Net Worth from Her Comeback

After inmate 55170-054 (the Bureau of Prisons number for Stewart) was released from prison, she went on a publicity tour to rebuild her brand:

She created a daytime television show, The Martha Stewart Show, which ran for five seasons from 2005 to 2010.
She produced her show, Martha, for the Hallmark Channel that ran from 2020 to 2012.
She released many books, including Martha Stewart Baking Handbook (2005) and Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook (2006).
She upgrades her style from K-Mart to Macy's with a new brand-new line of housewares.
She even created Martha Stewart Vintage wine.

In 2015, MSLO sold to Sequential Brands Group for $350 million, allowing Martha to cash-out. Martha continued to be a large shareholder in Sequential. In 2019, Sequential sold the Martha Stewart assets for $175 million to Marquee Brands, creating a final windfall for Martha, who is now 79 and happy in her retirement.

Martha Stewart’s Net Worth from Real Estate

The homemaker Stewart would naturally have lots of homes that need a makeover when she buys them. She amassed a real estate worth about $100 million, which includes:

She bought a 67-acre estate with a 12-bedroom home, located in Seal Harbor, Maine, with a lovely pink-colored driveway called Skylands. It is worth around $12 million. In 2015, she added an adjacent seven-acre property that she bought for $5.8 million.
Martha owns a 152-acre estate called Cantitoe Corners, located in Katonah, New York.
She owns an oceanfront property of one acre in the Hamptons worth about $15 million.
She has a multi-unit apartment in the West Village of New York City worth over $53 million.
She has a condominium on Fifth Avenue that overlooks Central Park that is worth $25 million.

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Conclusion

Martha says that she does not want to be remembered for going to jail as being the defining moment in her life. But Martha, it was hilarious to everybody except you. It did nothing to permanently harm her as the queen of the home-style decorations and fine cooking.

If Martha wants to finally get rid of the stigma of going to jail, may I suggest that for her 80th birthday party coming up on August 3, 2021, you get your boy toy Snoop Dogg and go to a state where recreational marijuana is legal.

Throw the biggest pot party you can. Record it for a live television special, Martha Stewart Gets Blasted! Get Oprah to produce it for broadcast.

By that time, hopefully, everyone in America will be vaccinated. We really need the Martha Stewart touch on how to party to celebrate! Invite me, and I will bring the (hash) butter knife, which my mom left me when she passed, and help make the brownies.