- The reality-TV couple Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag blew through their $10 million fortune from the MTV series "The Hills" in two years while they were in their 20s, the couple told People magazine in 2016.
- Pratt said he made up to $175,000 per episode, and the couple was making up to $2 million a year from paid appearances and photoshoots.
- By the end of "The Hills," they were broke after spending their fortune on things like $30,000 shopping sprees and $4,000 bottles of wine, according to Money.
- Now they're staging a comeback with something called "crystal therapy."
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Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag, made famous by MTV's six-season reality series "The Hills," blew through their multimillion-dollar fortune in two years while they were in their 20s.
In 2008, the couple was worth more than $10 million. Just two years later, by the show's finale, they were broke.
"We were immature and we got caught up," Pratt told In Touch Weekly in 2014. "Every time we'd go out to eat, we'd order $4,000 bottles of wine. Heidi was going to the mall and dropping $20,000 to $30,000 a day. We thought we were Jay Z and Beyoncé."
Here's a look at the reality-TV couple's spending and controversies, and how they're trying to stage a comeback with something called "crystal therapy."
DON'T MISS: How 'The Hills' cast has grown up since the reality show first aired 12 years ago
Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag starred on MTV's "The Hills," a six-season reality series that ran from 2006 to 2010 about a group of young people living in Los Angeles.
The show's cast also included Lauren Conrad, Audrina Patridge, Whitney Port, Lo Bosworth, and Brody Jenner.
Montag and Pratt reportedly built up a $10 million fortune from their time on "The Hills" and related engagements.
In addition to their salary from the series, the couple made up to $2 million a year from paid appearances and photoshoots, People magazine reported.
Pratt once said on Twitter that he was bringing in up to $175,000 per episode.
Montag and Pratt met at a club in Hollywood while Montag was filming the show in 2007.
Montag later told the Vice site Broadly that she knew when she met Pratt that he was the one.
"I pretty much told everyone I was going to marry him and that I loved him," Montag said, adding that everyone "thought I was crazy."
The couple eloped in November 2008 and had a wedding in California the next year.
Their April 2009 wedding at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Pasadena, California, in front of 200 guests and MTV cameras, later appeared in an episode of "The Hills."
Over the next few years, their relationship weathered a fake divorce and a sex-tape scandal.
In June 2010, Montag filed for a legal separation from Spencer, citing irreconcilable differences. She told People she had moved out of their shared home.
A month later, Montag filed for divorce, and Pratt said their marriage was "a show" solely for "The Hills."
During the divorce proceedings, Pratt said he was going to sell a sex tape featuring Montag.
In September 2010, the couple called off the divorce and got back together. The next month, they renewed their wedding vows.
But in July 2011, the couple said that the whole breakup and divorce was a publicity stunt to make money because they were broke.
The couple was also caught up in several controversies, including a feud with the NBC journalist Al Roker.
In 2009, after an interview with Roker about the couple's appearance on another reality show, Montag accused Roker of being hostile toward women, according to NBC.
"C'mon. I've interviewed hundreds of woman on this program, never had a complaint," Roker told the "Today" show host Meredith Vieira, adding, "They are so unused to people actually asking them a real question that they didn't know how to handle it."
In 2016, Pratt and Montag told People that they had blown through their entire $10 million fortune.
"We were keeping up with the Joneses, but we were going against Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes," Pratt said. "We should have stayed in our reality-TV lane."
Montag told the magazine that their business managers told them to stop spending, but they ignored them.
The couple spent their millions on $30,000 shopping sprees and $4,000 bottles of wine, they told In Touch Weekly.
"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 told Money in a 2018 interview. "The money was just coming so fast and so easy that my ego led me to believe that 'Oh, this is my life forever.'"
Pratt said he "probably spent a million dollars" on clothing.
Pratt told the Daily Beast that he "probably spent a million dollars on suits and fancy clothes."
"My whole million-dollar wardrobe — I would never wear that again," he said. "They're props."
The prospect of the apocalypse also contributed to their lavish spending, according to Pratt.
"The thing is, we heard that the planet was going to end in 2012," he told OK magazine in 2013. "We thought, 'We have got to spend this money before the asteroid hits.'"
Montag spent thousands on plastic surgery.
One day in late 2009, Montag had 10 procedures, including breast augmentation, neck liposuction, and a chin reduction, People reported at the time.
People estimated that the operations cost "upwards of $30,000."
Following the procedures, the reality-TV star told the magazine said she'd "never felt more beautiful and sexier."
"I didn't know I could have this much confidence," she said.
Years later, however, she expressed different sentiments about the work she had done.
"I was way too young to make such a life-changing decision," Montag told Cosmopolitan in a recent interview.
She said she "was under so much pressure because it was the beginning of comment sections and negativity and hate on the internet."
Now Pratt and Montag are staging their comeback.
The couple welcomed a son in October 2017, and they're appearing in MTV's "The Hills: New Beginnings."
The reality-TV couple is promoting something called "crystal therapy."
Pratt's interest in crystals appeared on an episode in the final season of "The Hills," when he famously pressed a quartz crystal to his forehead.
Pratt went from collecting crystals to making a business out of them.
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On his website, Pratt Daddy, he sells crystal pendants, bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and apparel. A citrine pendant costs $140 and a Pratt Daddy hoodie costs $50.
He boosts his crystal business by posting on Snapchat 30 to 50 times a day, according to Money.
Pratt told the magazine that if he announced a new crystal drop on Snapchat, the collection would sell out within the hour.
In April 2018, the Shorty Awards named Pratt the Snapchatter of the Year.
"I have closer relationships to my Snap DM people than I do to actual people in my life," Pratt told Money. "People write me essays, like longer things than I've written in college. I'm like, 'God, this is incredible. You just spent this much time to write me?'"
Montag models various products on the company's website and Instagram account.
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Pratt told INSIDER in 2017 that he believes that crystals hold "energy" and that they can amplify emotions in people who interact with them.
Pratt told Money that he sold 200 to 300 pendants a week.
He said he was also launching a Pratt Daddy coffee brand and partnering with a vineyard to create Pratt Daddy wine bottles with crystal glasses.
Pratt and Montag are not alone in believing in the healing power of crystals.
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Doctors and scientists have said that crystal healing is pseudoscience, but Wall Streeters and celebrities including Kim Kardashian West and Gwyneth Paltrow have touted its benefits, as INSIDER's Abby Jackson reported.
Pratt told INSIDER that he considers Paltrow, who sells crystals on her website, Goop, to be his competition.
"My new competitor is Gwyneth Paltrow selling her $85 medicine bag of tumbled rocks," Pratt said, "while I was shopping real crystals."
