Los Angeles: It’s good to give, says one of the planet’s biggest philanthropists, but don’t forget to keep a tidy sum for that rainy day.

“Keep a few hundred million at least, because you never know,” CNN founder Ted Turner told a conference on philanthropy this week in Little Rock, Arkansas. “Things could get really tough.”

“I’ve got to be careful I don’t give everything and be a poor, destitute old man, which would be really sad,” the former Mr Jane Fonda said.

Turner, who is ranked as the world’s 382nd richest person with a fortune estimated at $2 billion according to the latest Forbes list of billionaires, helped create the United Nations Foundation in 1998 as a way to distribute $1 billion he pledged to the organisation.

At the conference on innovative philanthropy, sponsored by the online magazine Slate, Turner also said that he would rather work with philanthropists than politicians.