Keke Palmer Opens Up About Declaring Bankruptcy At 18

Keke Palmer is opening up about her child star past — and her once-dire financial straits.

The “Nope” actor became her family’s breadwinner while still a young girl. And though that Hollywood gambit ultimately paid off, Palmer recently revealed she’d declared bankruptcy at 18 years of age.

“I was so spooked,” she admitted at the Building Wealth Today for Tomorrow financial literacy event in Chicago, per Afrotech. “I was like, ‘What went wrong?’”

Palmer was only 10 years old when she landed her first part in “Barbershop 2: Back in Business,” and went on to nab lead roles in major projects including “Akeelah and the Bee” (2006) and Nickelodeon’s “True Jackson, VP” (2008-2011). But that came at a cost.

“Due to my traveling and scheduling both of my parents had to stop working to support my career and be present for my three siblings, leaving me with the financial responsibility around age 12,” she wrote last year on Instagram. The actor said she took “great pride” in that, but the responsibility of becoming a “parentalized child” who paid the bills also forced her to abandon her youth.

Now 31 and with a child of her own, Palmer says she lives well “under” her means.

“If I got $10,000 in the bank, then my house be $500 a month,” she reportedly said at last week’s summit. “That’s how under I mean, because I can probably afford something $2,500 maybe, but I’m going way under. You know why? Because I wanna invest in my business.”

Palmer launched a streaming network named KeyTv on YouTube in 2022 to empower and amplify Black creatives — and reportedly invested $500,000 of her own to make it happen.

“So if I wanna invest in my business, then the material things that I’m having currently might have to take a short back,” she said at the summit. “Instead of wearing Gucci, I’m wearing Zara. I live in a good place. I drive a cool car, ’cause my money is going elsewhere.”

The “cool car,” she told her audience, is a Toyota.