India Gants Reveals the One Thing She Spent $60k of Her “ANTM ”Prize Money On, and the Tax Consequences That Followed
India Gants Reveals the One Thing She Spent $60k of Her “ANTM ”Prize Money On, and the Tax Consequences That Followed
Sara BelcherMon, February 23, 2026 at 9:48 PM UTC
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India Gants on 'America's Next Top Model'; Gants in 2026
VH1; India Gants/TikTok
India Gants won $100,000 whens he was crowned the winner of cycle 23 of America's Next Top Model
Just 19 at the time, she revealed in a storytime on TikTok what she spent her winnings on
Despite being cautioned about taxes, she admitted she'd "spent all the money" by the time tax season rolled around
When India Gants was crowned the winner of cycle 23 of America’s Next Top Model at just 19, she admitted she believed she was destined to “have money coming in like crazy.” Almost 10 years later, she admitted she would’ve spent her winnings differently if she’d known the reality.
In a two-part storytime on TikTok, Gants reveals that upon winning the season, she received “a check with one hundred thousand dollars literally written on it. No tax taken out.” Though her parents cautioned her to put aside some of that money for tax season, she admitted, “by the time that rolled around, I had already spent all the money.”
Her biggest purchase with her winnings? Paying for an entire year of rent for an apartment in New York City.
“I paid for a year up front in a beautiful New York City apartment that my roommate was gonna pay me every month to rent out,” she explained in her TikTok. “That was like over just over sixty thousand dollars. Plus, I used a broker.”
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She also admitted in a follow-up video that before paying for the apartment for a year, her first purchase with the prize money was a pair of Stuart Weitzman boots she said she’d wanted for “so long.”
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India Gants on 'America's Next Top Model'
VH1
“I thought that after winning America's Next Top Model, $100,000 checks were gonna be coming this way and that. I could not stop the money from coming in, right? Like I was gonna be booking so many jobs,” she continued. “I just thought like, I have to pay to maintain this lifestyle of somebody who just won America's Next Top Model. I wanna have a nice apartment in New York. I want to dress nicely, go to nice restaurants, like get my hair done, look presentable. I wanted to behave like the winner of America's Next Top Model. And I wanted to invest in myself after I had won.”
Gants admitted that, despite spending that year trying to book more modeling contracts in NYC, she realized the East Coast city “was not the market for me.”
“I love that city, but modeling-wise, it just — it was not clicking,” she said. “I moved to Los Angeles, and you need a car in Los Angeles, so I bought a car — I bought a really cheap used car for all cash up front. So a good chunk of the money went towards that as well, plus movers' fees, and the apartment there and just getting on my feet.”
“One thing led to another, and I ended up spending the $100,000 before I had paid taxes on it,” she said.
Gants admitted she was “paying off the taxes from that prize money for a very, very long time,” and even had to enroll in a payment plan to make repaying those taxes possible. Now 29, she said if she could do it again, she’d consider investing the money in the stock market instead, finding ways to make the money stretch further — but she also recognized the learning experience that came from making those mistakes.
“Do I regret it? Actually, probably yes. But the way I like to learn lessons is through making mistakes,” she concluded. “So I definitely learned some good lessons and learned a lot about finance and financial planning.”
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
