• Cher came back from owing $270,000 in back taxes only to wind up broke again years later.
• The star makes several striking points about money in her memoir published this week.
• Cher says she overspent, lacked financial acumen, and benefited from owning real estate.

Cher has made and lost several fortunes in her career. The "Believe" singer, who shot to fame with hits including "I Got You Babe" with her ex-husband Sonny Bono, reflects on her financial triumphs and troubles in her new book, "Cher: The Memoir, Part One."

Here are six points she makes about money:

1. Feeling safe

Cher's parents struggled financially, so she often had to give things up she liked. When she made it big, the performer found comfort in having backup products.

"I was so insecure about becoming poor again that I started buying two of a few key household items in case we needed to replace things that had worn out," she writes.

"There was no logic to owning two electric frying pans or two hair dryers — I'd have been a broke housewife with great hair — but it made me feel better because since childhood I'd been accustomed to losing what I had or being forced to trade down to a worse situation."

2. Overspending

"We're broke, Cher. We owe the IRS $270,000 in back taxes and we don't have the money," Bono said to Cher in the late 1960s, in her telling.

Cher realized that she'd spent almost precisely that amount on her dream house. "That's how people in the movie industry or music business get into such trouble," she writes.

"You come from nothing and suddenly you've got all this money and you're doing Ed Sullivan and people are screaming for you all over the world and you think it's gonna last forever," she continued. "Then one day it dries up and you realize you never had any backup."

In 1980, Cher was on the brink of declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy when she was saved by a man who'd bought some apartment buildings from her — he decided to pay in full instead of in installments.

"Thank you, God," she writes. "I vowed never to overextend myself like that again. (Not that it stuck—I've been overextending myself in a million ways my whole life!)."

3. Financial acumen

Cher writes she was "someone who didn't know my ass from first base when it came to money."

She never considered that Bono might not be financially savvy or the best person to manage their money, and the pair didn't have a business manager.

Cher later relied on David Geffen, a music and film producer, to help her handle her finances.

4. Checking contracts

After separating from Bono in the 1970s, Cher learned from Geffen that despite being a duet for years, the pair were far from equal partners.

"Sweetheart, this contract is involuntary servitude," Geffen told Cher in her telling. "You work for Sonny. You have no rights, no vote, no money, nothing."

Cher writes in her memoir that "the contracts he'd had me sign were secretly designed to strip me of my income and the rights to my own career."

In 1980, when Cher discovered her managers were making more money than her, she swiftly fired them.

5. Diversified portfolio

Cher writes that when she had spare cash at one point, she invested some of it in apartment buildings which she later sold. The buyer's decision to pay in full instead of in installments not only taught her a lesson in not overextending herself, it also showed the power of holding assets and the value of a diversified portfolio.

In this case, parking her money in real estate spared her from bankruptcy.

6. Helping family

After her career took off, Cher supported her mom financially and at one point gave her money to open a store called Granny's Cabbage Patch in Brentwood, California.

"Mom's store attracted a lot of press attention, but it was never solvent and soon began to lose money," Cher writes. "As my business manager put it, 'Georgia's independence is killing you.'"

• Cher and Sonny Bono costarred on "The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour" when they were married in the '70s.
• In her new memoir, Cher writes that Bono "secretly designed" her contracts so she earned nothing.
• "I was an employee of Cher Enterprises with no ownership, so I couldn't access any of the money."

With their hit CBS show "The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour," which premiered in 1971, husband-and-wife entertaining duo Sonny and Cher had become "the unlikely darlings of prime time."

But behind the scenes, Cher writes in her new book, "The Memoir: Part One," Bono had become increasingly controlling.

Bono, who was 11 years her senior, had already forbidden her from wearing perfume, playing softball with her mom, going to parties, and hanging out with her girlfriends, which she says he described as "dumb."

By the time she was 26, Cher writes that she was trapped in a "loveless marriage" and even considered jumping from the balcony of their suite to escape the loneliness. Instead, she decided to leave him.

Cher and Bono kept up appearances for their show and even continued to share their home on weekdays. But everything changed in December 1973, when Cher began dating the music mogul David Geffen, whom she describes as "a genius in business" and "the most loving boyfriend I'd ever had."

At one point, Geffen asked about Cher's contract with CBS. She told him she'd never read it and didn't know how she got paid.

Shortly after, Cher says Geffen called her with "devastating" news: "Sweetheart, this contract is involuntary servitude," he told her. "You work for Sonny. You have no rights, no vote, no money, nothing. You're an employee of something called 'Cher Enterprises' with a salary you were likely never paid and three weeks' vacation per year. He owns 95% of the company and the rest belongs to his lawyer, Irwin Spiegel."

"Then David started reading the contract to me, and sure enough, I couldn't even sign a check or withdraw any money without Sonny or Irwin's signature," Cher writes. "I was an employee of Cher Enterprises with no ownership, so I couldn't access any of the money I earned for the company. Beyond that, I was signed to the company and could only work with Sonny's permission. That meant not only did I have no money, I had no way to make any money unless Sonny signed off on it."

Cher says she remembers Bono giving her pages to sign that said "Cher Enterprises," but she simply thought the name "sounded cool" — and never thought that Bono would betray her trust. She also assumed his lawyer was working for her as well.

"I'd worked my whole life, yet apparently I had nothing to show for it," she writes. "I'd never for a second imagined that I needed to protect myself from Sonny, of all people, yet the contracts he'd had me sign were secretly designed to strip me of my income and the rights to my own career."

With Geffen's help, Cher hired her own lawyer. Cher also recalls confronting Bono about their unequal terms, even threatening to leave the show if they couldn't spit their earnings 50-50, but he refused to draw up a new contract.

At this point, "The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour" was expected to be renewed for a new season. Cher had two more years left in her contract as an employee of Cher Enterprises.

So she called Fred Silverman, CBS's head of programming, to beg for cancellation. In exchange, Cher promised not to leave CBS for another network.

It worked. "The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour" ended in 1974, which sparked an uproar from their devoted audience. "Season four, which had been due to start that fall, was dead in the water," Cher writes. "I'd sacrificed the show to save myself."

Cher and Bono filmed their final show together on January 21, 1974. One month later, Bono filed for divorce. "That was a surprise," Cher writes.

Cher's lawyer subsequently filed divorce paperwork of her own, officially accusing Bono of "involuntary servitude" in direct violation of the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution. She writes that this legal move "drove Sonny crazy." The proceedings dragged on for years, Cher recalls, partially due to a messy custody dispute over their son, Chaz. Their divorce was finalized on June 27, 1975.

Cher went on to host two seasons of "Cher," a solo variety show on CBS, in 1975 and 1976. She won an Oscar in 1988 for best actress in "Moonstruck," a Grammy in 2000 for her hit song "Believe," and an Emmy in 2003 for "Cher: The Farewell Tour."