# Gloria Steinem Built a 10 Million Dollar Life While Insisting Money Was Boring > Gloria Steinem died this week at 92, leaving behind a career that carried her from a childhood trailer home to the center of American feminism, and a piece of advice about money that she never stopped repeating. - Source: Morning Week - Canonical URL: https://morningweek.com/article/gloria-steinem-built-a-10-million-dollar-life-while-insisting-money-was-boring - Author: Morning Week Newsroom - Section: World - Published: 2026-09-05T11:57:46.048Z - Updated: 2026-09-05T11:57:46.048Z - Tags: Gloria Steinem, feminism, Ms. magazine, career advice, obituary, women's rights --- Gloria Steinem died Wednesday in New York City at 92, closing out a life that carried her from a trailer home in Ohio to becoming one of the most recognizable faces of American feminism. Among the things she left behind was a piece of financial philosophy she repeated for decades, one that stood in sharp contrast to the wealth she eventually built. Money, she liked to say, is boring. ## From a trailer to Smith College Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1934, the daughter of a traveling antiques and jewelry salesman whose work kept the family living out of a trailer for stretches of her childhood. Her parents divorced in 1944, and a young Steinem took on much of the responsibility of caring for her mother, who struggled with mental illness. She went on to graduate from Smith College in 1956, launching a career in journalism that would eventually pull her toward activism instead. ## The assignment that redirected everything In 1963, Steinem went undercover as a waitress inside Hugh Hefner's Playboy Club to report on conditions there, an assignment that made her famous but one she later said she regretted being defined by. The real turning point came afterward, when she attended a meeting on women's abortion rights that reshaped how she thought about her own work, pulling her fully into the movement that would define the rest of her life. ## Building an era's institutions Through the 1970s, Steinem helped found some of the era's most consequential feminist institutions, including Ms. magazine, the Women's Action Alliance and the National Women's Political Caucus. She spent the decades that followed campaigning for workplace equality, abortion rights and sex education, staying visibly engaged in the movement well into her 90s. ## Ten million dollars, and no interest in discussing it By the end of her life, Steinem's estimated net worth had reached about 10 million dollars, yet she remained famously dismissive of wealth as any kind of measure of a life well lived. Money is boring, she said, and as you may have noticed, groups of people based on money are boring. She offered similar advice to college graduates over the years, urging them to do what they love because each person carries unique interests and talents, while making sure basic needs like shelter and food were covered rather than chasing a paycheck for its own sake. The moment when you feel you are doing something you care about, that you can be honest, and that you're able to live in the moment. That was how Steinem described success in her own words, a standard that had little to do with a bank balance. She died surrounded by people who loved her, according to statements shared afterward, with no cause of death given. The institutions she helped build, Ms. magazine among them, continue on, and the record she leaves behind is measured less by the fortune she eventually accumulated than by the fact that she spent nearly six decades doing precisely what her own advice recommended, work she cared about, on her own terms. --- Originally published by Morning Week. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://morningweek.com/article/gloria-steinem-built-a-10-million-dollar-life-while-insisting-money-was-boring.