We Have Escobar At Home: Homer Simpson's Secret Empire You Had No Idea About
After everything you've seen throughout The Simpsons, have you ever gotten a sneaky suspicion that Homer can afford all too much for a guy with a $36k/yr salary?
Wait. After this question, you're probably wondering: "How do they know Homer's salary?..", aren't you? Oh well.
In season 7 episode 26, we can see that Homer's weekly take-home pay is $362.19 — it was in 1996. This sum translates to $694.46 in 2023, which is in turn $36,111.92 a year. So basically, Homer's earning $36k/yr or its equivalent back in the day.
Despite that, Homer has an entire four-bedroom house, buys expensive tech, takes multiple holidays all the time, and can give his son a few hundred bucks in one go, no problem.
He has a family of five, including himself, to feed — so how can he possibly afford all that?
If we were here to drag you to a financial coach session, we'd call it a diversified income. But since we're in it for the drama, let's go with: Homer Simpson has a secret empire that provides him with a ton of money!
Let's see.
Homer's band released a #1 selling record back in the day, and it's likely that he's still receiving solid royalties from the Be Sharps, Sadgasm, and other bands, likely.
At some point, Homer made a lot — and we do mean a lot! — of money as Mr. Plow. His project's scale was so massive he was even handed the keys to the city.
To top it all off, Homer owned the Denver Broncos, a football team estimated to be worth around $4.65 billion. This alone could cover all the family's needs, don't you think?
He also had many side hustles throughout the series, but that's beside the point… Because now we're moving on to the criminal part of Homer Simpson's empire!
Homer works for a nuclear plant, and in the opening titles of each episode, we see him leaving it with enriched uranium. Why would he need it? Because he's selling it to third-world countries and terrorist groups, of course!
In season 22, episode 12, as Bart is trying to sell nuclear secrets from Homer's factory to Chinese agents, Homer intervenes during the exchange and offers his nuclear plant knowledge instead which later leads to a nuclear explosion in China.
What this episode really shows us is that Homer had access to top-secret data and was likely selling it himself or receiving paychecks for corporate espionage.
This also checks out since in season 1, episode 11, Homer promises the Albanian spy, Adil Hoxha, to send him the factory's blueprints after Adil is already exposed.
Add to that the fact that Homer met Fidel Castro in person… Well, you get the picture, and the picture makes sense: Homer's income was so diversified that it included everything from a sports team to nuclear black market deals.