Gingrich: My jeweler is none of your business

Pressed on what he bought for $500,000 at Tiffany's, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich on Sunday refused to answer, saying, "It's my private life."

"I'm a guy running for president who pays all his bills," Gingrich said on CBS News' "Face the Nation."

Gingrich, repeatedly clearing his throat, declined to say how he managed to run up such a big tab at the luxury jeweler. And he said the matter should in no way impugn his fiscal acumen.

"We are private citizens. I work very hard. We have a reasonably good income," Gingrich said of he and wife, Callista. "I currently owe nothing except I owe one mortgage on a house that is rental property in Wisconsin. Everything else is totally paid for. My home is paid for. My cars are paid for. We don't have a second house. We don't do elaborate things."

Gingrich described his Tiffany's account as a "revolving fund," saying it was a "normal way of doing business."

The account surfaced in his wife's financial disclosure statements from 2005 and 2006, first reported by POLITICO.

"Go talk to Tiffany's," Gingrich said. "It's a standard no interest account. It was paid off automatically, we paid no interest on it, there was no problem with it. It's a normal way of doing business."