At the height of their fame as stars of MTV's “The Hills,” around 2008, Spencer Pratt and his now-wife Heidi Montag were worth millions. Pratt, the de facto villain of the show, reportedly earned up to $175,000 per episode, he once wrote on Twitter.
Along with paid appearances and photoshoots, he and Heidi brought in up to $2 million per year, People reports. But the fame didn’t last, and neither did the money. MTV cancelled “The Hills” after six seasons and the couple’s relevance sharply declined. Despite the loss of their six-figure paychecks, though, the Pratts didn’t slow down their spending, and they blew through their entire $10 million net worth.
“It’s really easy to spend millions of dollars if you’re not careful and you think it’s easy to keep making millions of dollars,” Pratt tells Money in a recent profile. “The money was just coming so fast and so easy that my ego led me to believe that, ‘Oh, this is my life forever.’”
Their extensive list of luxuries included $30,000 shopping sprees, $4,000 bottles of wine, $15,000-a-night bodyguards and a crystal collection worth approximately $1 million.
“We were keeping up with the Joneses, but we were going against Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes,” Pratt told People in 2016. “We should have stayed in our reality TV lane.”
The Pratts were soon broke and forced to move to Carpinteria, California, where they could live rent-free in a house owned by Spencer's parents. Heidi took control of the budget and began eliminating expenses. “I love to spend money, and she loves to not spend money,” Pratt tells Money. “If we had her as the accountant back in the day, we would have $20 million in the bank account right now.”
Pratt is making a financial comeback. He commands a loyal and substantial following on Snapchat, where he meticulously documents his days and promotes products. He has also turned his hobby of collecting gems into a full-fledged business via an online crystal store. He says he packs, addresses and mails every order that comes through the shop himself.
And business is booming: He tells Money that he sells between 200 and 300 crystals per week, and each goes for $120 to $300 a pop.
He also has plans to hawk other tie-ins to his daily life, including branded t-shirts, bottles of wine, coffee and hummingbird feeders.
The Pratts aren’t the only celebrities to breeze through millions. Nicolas Cage squandered his $150 million fortune on a string of expensive and often eccentric purchases. Eventually he faced foreclosure on several properties and owed the IRS $6.3 million in property taxes.
Cage’s purchases included 15 residences, including a $25 million waterfront home in Newport Beach, California, a $3 million island in the Bahamas, two European castles (one worth $10 million and one worth $2.3 million), a burial tomb, pygmy heads and multiple pet octopuses.
Johnny Depp is also known for his over-the-top lifestyle, the details of which came to light during an on-going legal battle between Depp and his management company, The Management Group (TMG). After the actor accused TMG of mismanaging his finances, the group filed a countersuit claiming that Depp had dug himself into a financial hole.
According to the lawsuit, his include $30,000 on wine, $300,000 on staff and $200,000 for a private jet.
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