OPINION:
How did you get through the lockdowns last year? A never-ending supply of Lindt Balls? Nightly martini sessions? Sobbing into your pillow when your sourdough starter flopped?
If 2021 saw you embrace new and shiny things with gusto, then you would happen to be in very famous company. New calculations have revealed that Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex managed to debut $143,509 worth of new jewellery and clothes last year, despite spending most of it, like the rest of us, stuck inside.
That sort of spending would outwardly suggest that doing business with Netflix and becoming "Impact Partners" with a billion-dollar Wall Street investment fund are delightfully lucrative ways to while away the hours in between garden yoga and cold-calling senators.
But here's the thing: Just how golden are the Sussexes' finances?
While they might have signed a bevy of high-profile deals, all heralded with bloated press releases, two new developments this week have put something of a question mark over just how robust the couple's coffers, both personally and in terms of their charity, might be.
To start with, just 18 months after the Sussexes moved into their $20 million Montecito mansion the couple are already looking to sell the house, according to the Mirror.
The report suggests that the duo are "said not to be thrilled" about the property. A source has told the paper that they are "open to private offers" and are already looking around the neighbourhood for a new place.
The source has said: "They are thinking of selling their house there. However, it won't be on the market because of who they are. It's only being shown to people who are confirmed with funds and are serious buyers.
"They want to stay in the neighbourhood or nearby, but they aren't over the moon about the house and the location."
All of which is curious given that last year, during Harry's appearance on the Late Late Show with James Corden, when the duo video called Meghan, she said at one point: "I think we've done enough moving."
While Harry and Meghan have repeatedly made headlines since 2020, inking one high-profile deal after another which are estimated to total more than $200 million, their shiny new US careers, in terms of actual output, have outwardly remained in neutral.
Sure, they are probably beavering away behind closed doors, one blue sky thinking session after another, production meeting after production meeting, but they have not released anything via their two streaming partnerships in more than 12 months.
In December 2020, less than two weeks after announcing they were Spotify's newest A-list hires, they put out one 32-minute podcast which featured a clutch of celebrities, a number of whom would appear to be friends given they were at the Sussexes' wedding. (Let's be honest, as great as he is, getting Uncle Elton on the line felt pretty lackadaisical.)
Since then, and despite hiring award-winning podcast producer Rebecca Sananes in July last year as Archewell's Head of Audio, they have yet to put out a follow-up.
So too their Netflix programming. More than 14 months ago, in September 2020, when their money-making marriage with the streaming was first revealed, they loftily promised they would be making "content that informs but also gives hope". Goodo then, but where is it?
To be fair, high-quality TV and documentaries are not fast or easy things to make, a situation made that much more difficult by the pandemic. Yet still, they have only announced two projects, Pearl, a children's animation (which the Telegraph has reported the Duchess had discussed with the streaming company when she was a working member of the royal family in 2018) and a documentary about the Invictus Games, the charity sporting event for veterans previously founded by Harry.
These might both prove to be touching and powerful shows but on paper they don't exactly sound like they will be setting viewers or Hollywood on fire.
Having swiftly repaid the $4.4 million of sovereign grant money used to renovate their supposedly still official UK residence, Frogmore Cottage, not long after announcing their betrothal to Netflix, that would suggest that some sort of lump sum had come their way.
However, this sort of deal, the Telegraph has reported, is "more likely to see the couple paid a comparatively small retainer fee, with larger sums being confirmed when the programs they pitch are given the green light".
With, as far as has been made public, only two shows having been given the go-ahead, just how much cash might they have earned from this deal?
This week marks two years since the Sussexes dropped their Megxit bombshell and therefore two years since Harry was forced to painfully learn, potentially for the first time in his life, about this thing called money worries.
As he stroppily told Oprah Winfrey during their dynamite interview last March, "my family literally cut me off financially".
His barely concealed indignation at this turn of events, of having to financially fend for himself and no longer receive British taxpayer-funded security despite living on another continent, is painfully revealing about just how divorced from reality the duke has been for much of his life.
This is a man after all who, up until the age of 35, had been totally supported by his father, followed by the military, followed by his father again and a man who, chances are has never sat for a job interview, done a CV, paid a gas bill or had to foot the bill for a roof over his head.
But real life is a cruel mistress.
Harry and Meghan's new life might be all freedom, father-son bike rides and a never-ending parade of beige sofas, but it's not a cheap one. The Daily Mail has previously estimated the costs to keep the Sussex ship afloat, including their staff, utilities, mortgage repayments and their security costs, would come to more than $6 million per year.
More recently, the royal fashion site UFO No More, which scrupulously tallies these things, put out its annual list of the value of the new clothing worn by royal women in the last year and there in the number two spot, beating three queens and three future queens, was Meghan who wore $115,960 worth of new pieces last year.
(Coming in at number one on the list was Meghan's sister-in-law Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, who managed to wear $160,523 worth of designer duds in the previous 12 months.)
Similarly, the Daily Mail has reported that the former Suits star also wore $27,549 worth of new jewellery in 2021, including a $2013 necklace meant to "boost self-confidence" and the $5523 diamond earrings she wore to visit their chicken coop during the Oprah special.
Hopefully that self-confidence necklace is working its magic because elsewhere, the success of their charity arm, Archewell, has been called into question with official tax documents revealing that it raised less than $USD50,000 in 2020.
Not the greatest start to their brave new careers now is it?
Obviously, it's impossible to know the real state of Harry and Meghan's bank accounts. In her former life, the duchess' entrepreneurialism saw her found and run a successful blog, launch a clothing collection for Canadian department store Reitmans and star in a hit cable TV show for seven seasons, no mean feat at all. My point being, she is clearly a very good businesswoman and they could well be rolling in it.
However, if that is the case, then their itchy real estate feet leaves us here: With the fact that they never, ever seem content or happy with their lot. In the past three years, they have moved house five times (going from Nott Cott in Kensington Palace to Windsor's Frogmore Cottage to a borrowed mansion on Vancouver Island to Tyler Perry's Beverly Hills mansion to their current house), lived in three countries, and changed careers in the most spectacular fashion possible.
Why are Harry and Meghan forever not quite content? Just what are they looking for?
Back in 2016, a year before she would meet her prince, she wrote about spending her month-long break from filming Suits on an Eat, Pray, Love-style journey in Europe. Her readers, she kindly pointed out, might not have the funds for a month on the Med but what she really wanted everyone to do was to join her in "the act of celebrating and really truly enjoying your life … To snuggle up and relish what you've got."
It's a lovely idea and one that seems to have got lost somewhere along the way. Maybe it's time to reanimate The Tig – there's another fortune to be made (oh! The sponcon rivers of gold) but more importantly, 2022 Harry and Meghan could do with exactly this sort of sage advice.
• Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years' experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
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