How Much Is Kat Timpf Actually Worth?
With cancel culture storms pulverizing the shores on both sides of the political spectrum, it's hard to believe that a heavily right-leaning feminist reporter who doubles as a comedian can navigate those choppy waters. Yet Kat Timpf is weathering that storm rather nicely, thank you very much. Fearless and funny, Timpf has managed to sail through a great deal of adversity to find a harbor of prosperity at Fox News, where she's best known as a panelist on "Gutfeld!" and co-host of "Tyrus and Timpf" with professional wrestler and political pundit George Murdock (aka Tyrus) on Fox News Radio. Along with once being an occasional contributor to the online version of conservative magazine National Review, she's also prolific as a standup comedian whenever she gets a chance to hit the stage.
Unlike comedic colleagues like Bill Mahar and Joe Rogan, who slowly fell into the political world while doing standup, Timpf's career path took the opposite direction, starting as a freelancer in the hard realm before drifting into standup. Enjoying what is quite possibly the best of both worlds, Timpf is laughing her way to the bank.
Currently on stable ground and remarkably scandal-free in a rather contentious industry, Timpf isn't quite A-list fodder yet, but after several years of hard knocks, she might be priming herself to take her talents to the next level. While there aren't any confirmed reports of Timpf's current net worth as of this writing, some outlets, such as MSN, place her wealth at approximately $1.5 million.
Kat Timpf had a strict upbringing
Katherine Clare Timpf was born October 29, 1988, in Detroit and was raised in a strict Catholic family. Timpf recalls her parents were very strict and, being the oldest of three children in the household, usually received the brunt of the punishment.
"I got grounded for everything because I was the oldest," she said on "The Kat Timpf Show," a podcast she started in 2016 that ran for roughly a year. Timpf added that her parents made her break up with her boyfriend when he circulated a bikini shot of her online. "We were swimming," said Timpf, who was 16 at the time. "It wasn't like it was a basement photo shoot. I woke up one morning, and my mother was very upset. I was housebound for two weeks." That didn't stop her from being "a terror" at school; by Timpf's account, she was so disruptive that on days when a substitute teacher was filling in, she'd be called to the principal's office before class even started. "It was really because I was such a nightmare. People were quitting their teaching careers," she quipped on her podcast.
As rebellious as she was, she learned a great deal of life lessons while growing up in Detroit. Undoubtedly, there was a lot of love under that roof as well, given that she's reportedly very tight with her siblings and her dad, whom she affectionately calls Chief. Unfortunately, her mother died in 2015 of amyloidosis.
Kat Timpf excelled in high school and college
While she might have been a troublemaker in school, Timpf was an excellent student. Her marks were high enough that she earned a scholarship to study English at Hillsdale College, roughly an hour's drive southeast of Detroit. "I was in a sorority," said Timpf on "Fox and Friends," adding, "I never once, like, danced around in my bathing suit and blew glitter out of my hand."
She probably didn't have much time for that given her studies, and recalling what it took to get into college. In a National Review piece, Timpf wrote that she paid for college "mostly through the combination of a modest loan, working, and busting my a** hard enough to earn a full-tuition scholarship, with only a little bit of help from my parents for the first semester only."
She aspired for a media career and was overjoyed that she was accepted into the prestigious Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. But recognizing that direction would likely involve student loans that would take forever to pay, she withdrew the offer and decided to learn about journalism through a series of unpaid internships. It was a hard road that would begin with an internship in Los Angeles and an apartment so unsanitary that she would at one point contract fleas and scabies. Timpf's enrolment in the school of hard knocks was about to begin.
Kat Timpf clings to her libertarian values
Kat Timpf's decision to forgo attendance at the Columbia School of Broadcasting and accumulate a mounting student loan debt and instead pursue the less lucrative internship route seems testament to her libertarian political beliefs. "I define it as free markets and no 'judgies,'" she said to The Collegian, the student paper at Timpf's alma mater. "It means limited government in all aspects. So get it out of economic policy, have a sensible foreign policy, and allow social decisions to be made by the individual."
Libertarians tend to skew further right than conservatives, so Timpf likely didn't have issues fitting in with media catering to Republican audiences. She had no problem railing against liberals on issues like political correctness, government spending, and defunding the police which she once dismissed as "completely outrageous, wrong, and out-of-touch with reality" in a Fox News opinion piece. But she's been known to take a few shots at the right, such as calling Donald Trump a "hack in a trucker hat" in National Review.
Still, she believes plenty of middle ground exists with her political perspective. "Being a libertarian, there is something about me for everyone to hate, but there is also something about me for everyone to agree on," said Timpf to The Collegian. "I think I'm in a very good position to have conversations with people because I can agree with them on some things if not others."
Kat Timpf got to Fox News the hard way
After leaving Hillsdale College in 2010, Timpf hit the ground running. Her first stop was Los Angeles, where she landed a job as an airborne traffic reporter. "I was laid off pretty quickly," she said to Politico, adding, "which was totally fair, because I'm terrible with directions." Timpf lost her car and her apartment after her gig went south and wound up heading east, landing a digital editor position at The Washington Times. She also managed to land contributor stints at collegiate publication Campus Reform and National Review, where some of her articles landed appearances on political shows like Fox News.
But in 2014, while on assignment with Campus Reform, Timpf really garnered controversial exposure. When covering a Feminist Majority Foundation convention in Washington D.C., Timpf was singled out as a media figure to be avoided because of her affiliation with Campus Reform, a conservative organization. "I'm a female myself; I'm sure we could have found some common ground," she said on Fox News. "But they were just so terrified based on the label 'conservative' [and] decided to discriminate against me which is exactly what they were they're fighting against."
The silver lining, though, came in the form of Greg Gutfeld. As Timpf told The Collegian, it was thanks to that Feminist Majority Foundation convention video that he asked the journalist to appear regularly on his "Red Eye" program, where Timpf started to develop a following.
Kat Timpf started in standup comedy as a sideline
Kat Timpf hasn't been particularly specific about how and why she got into standup comedy, but it's likely that an impoverished life after college might have been an incentive. It was a meager revenue stream for starters, and it likely paralleled her perspective at the time. "I'm the kind of person who always uses humor to deal with anything that's depressing," she once said to Reason. She offered another clue on "The Kat Timpf Show," when she recalled watching TV with a previous boyfriend a few years ago. "I remember one time I was watching 'Red Eye' with him and his brother and I was going, 'I'm funnier than those girls and I'll be on that show.'"
Timpf used her life experiences as material for her standup routines that eventually saw her play major venues from New York's Gotham Comedy Club to Los Angeles's The Improv (via The Stand). She also incorporated humor into her National Review articles, a regular appearance on a radio morning show in nearby Baltimore, and even a field reporter gig with YouTube channel Barstool Sports, even though sports was hardly her forte.
But she credits her comedic route as a great training ground for a job involving being in front of the cameras. "I can't imagine having been on television without doing standup first," she said to the The Collegian. "Standup is much scarier than television because on television, no one can tell you that you suck while you're talking."
Kat Timpf is remarkably scandal free
Kat Timpf might have been seen as a red-hot acquisition when she officially joined Fox News late in 2015, but the newsroom work environment was nothing short of volcanic. She had to navigate through a firestorm rife with sexual improprieties that saw the departure of big name personalities like Bill O'Reilly and Fox News chairman Roger Ailes.
The wave of sexual harassment charges hit "Fox News Specialists," the show Timpf co-hosted with Eric Bolling, whom the New York Times reported was sacked after being discovered sending crude text messages to female colleagues. The axing also spelled the end of the show, leaving "Gutfeld!" as Timpf's only on-air gig at Fox News until she landed the short-lived "Sincerely, Kat" in 2019.
How Timpf stayed away from those toxic hot zones is anyone's guess, but suffice to say that bad taste in boyfriends aside, she's remarkably scandal-free. Yet she made up for it with some colorful stances on pop culture topics. One of her first sorties as a divisive force started with her take on "Star Wars." On Fox Network's late-night "Red Eye," Timpf dismissed the sci-fi franchise by saying, "I have never had any interest in watching space nerds poke each other with their little space nerd sticks," prompting an angry social media backlash. On "Gutfeld!," she attacked alt-rock act Radiohead's fan base as being "strange, malnourished and sad," a diatribe that didn't particularly go over well with the band's followers.
Kat Timpf has been bullied because of where she works
As Kat Timpf might tell you, it's not easy working at Fox News, especially when you're likely to run into folks who aren't exactly fans of the channel. In 2018, Timpf tweeted that she was "[run] out of an establishment" because of who employed her. While she didn't elaborate, some follow up by National Review revealed that Timpf was at a Brooklyn bar meeting friends when her path crossed with an apparently intoxicated woman who was angry about her association with Fox News and chased her out of the watering hole. A few months earlier, another Timpf tweet stated that her dinner was interrupted by a man who "hates me and [told me] I'm ruining the country."
But her worst altercation took place in 2017 at a New York bar, where Timpf was on hand to support libertarian podcast Ben Kissel's bid to become Brooklyn borough president. While Timpf was waiting in line to speak, a man came up to her and emptied an entire bottle of water on her head. Shocked and soaked, Timpf was unable to speak, while the man escaped. "By dumping his water on my head, the very least he could have done was express what it was specifically that he had an issue with," she later tweeted.
Speaking to The Wrap about the incident, Timpf was glad the bottle didn't contain a harmful substance. "It's not lost on me that it could have been worse," she said.
Kat Timpf kept her love life secret until she married an Army vet
Ever since she became a public media figure, Kat Timpf showed a great deal of adeptness in keeping her romantic life under wraps. Besides having a boyfriend who was already an adult when she was still in her teens, Timpf also admitted on Twitter to having a relationship with a heroin addict. Suffice to say that Timpf has had a bit of a wild side to her dating life.
That all changed when she chose a "clean-cut" slice of American pie named Cameron Friscia to share the rest of her life with. It started with a virtual connection on networking app Raya. And when Timpf realized that Friscia, an Army veteran who's currently a research associate at Coatue Management, was boyfriend material, the two fell in love and eventually got hitched. The marriage was conducted outdoors in New York on May 1, 2021, with several Fox News employees in attendance as well as high-profile buddies that included Meghan McCain. And while Timpf has often revealed she had grown cynical about relationships, she reversed those feelings once she got to know Friscia.
"I think the vibe of the wedding was that everyone was definitely really happy for me, but also there was an element of shock, even for me, that this was truly happening," said Timpf to People. "He has changed me for the better and it's the best feeling in the world."
Kat Timpf is modest about her wealth
There's no doubt that Kat Timpf's star is growing, although she's not quite A-list enough to finagle an invite to the Emmys or Golden Globes (unless of course, she's nominated for any of those awards). And while she's a celebrity in media circles, she's also not exactly rolling in as much dough as Fox News colleague Sean Hannity. Given her profile, she's not living in Manhattan luxury. And by all accounts, she doesn't even own a car. "Personally, I would have no idea how to get anywhere without Uber," she said on Fox Business News.
According to her website, she lives with her husband in Brooklyn. "It took years of struggle with low pay to get to where I am now," said Timpf on Twitter, "and even now, my apartment is a rental." As for how much they pay for their flat each month, much of that depends on where in Brooklyn they live. Statistics from RentCafe indicate that you can get a studio apartment for as low as $1,720 in neighborhoods like Gerritsen Beach and Madison, while more posh renters dish out as much as $4,223 in ritzy Greenpoint.
Still, even if her fame and fortune rose and enabled her to own a home in Brooklyn, Timpf argued that getting one for six figures wouldn't provide much bang for the buck. That point she hilariously made clear with a Twitter post of a ramshackle cardboard dwelling.
Kat Timpf likely has a small salary compared to most media celebs
Ever since joining Fox News in 2015, Kat Timpf no longer has to live hand-to-mouth on freelancing now, thanks to a steady income. "I'm rich as hell now," snarkily tweeted Timpf. But she's not exactly earning the dough that her peers at her workplace are raking in. Compared to the annual salaries of Fox News heavyweights like Sean Hannity ($45 million) and Tucker Carlson ($6 million) enjoy, Timpf's still earning peanuts. Even her boss Greg Gutfeld takes in $7 million a year.
Still, Timpf ain't exactly hurting if the figure arrived at by Facts Buddy is any indication. The website estimated Timpf takes in $510,000 a year, which included her Fox New salary, freelancing, paid appearances and standup comedy. After six years at Fox News, that means she would have brought in some $3.06 million. If she had to spend roughly half that amount on expenses from rent to taxes, she'd be worth around $1.5 million.
It's also hard to argue that Timpf has made it via her share of setbacks. "I had a good laugh at the insinuation that I represent the privileged elite who haven't struggled given what my background is," she once tweeted. But she's richer than her husband, Cameron Friscia, which unconfirmed outlet Celeb Hook estimates as being valued at a million. So, is it fair to deduce that she might have been the one asking for a prenup if the subject ever came up?