Seven years ago, reality stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt were living the dream.
Their drama-stirring roles on the MTV reality show The Hills were bringing in six-figure pay cheques each, plus staged paparazzi shoots and appearances were bringing in more than $2 million dollars a year.
But then, as quickly as all that money started to come in, it was all gone.
On the heels of the news of the upcoming Hills reunion, the couple explained to People how they went from being millionaires to living in Pratt’s parents vacation home in Santa Barbara, CA rent-free.
“We were keeping up with the Joneses, but we were going against Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes,” Pratt, 32 tells People.
“We should have stayed in our reality TV lane.”
Montag and Pratt explained that after they married in 2009, they got caught up in the lifestyle they thought they should have.
“I was kind of playing house,” says Montag, 29, of her spending habit.
“I felt like I was someone I wasn’t. We had business managers who told us to stop spending but we acted like we knew what we were doing.”