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Sarah Ferguson's down-to-earth charm saw her win the hearts of the nation, but behind closed doors, it appears her spending was anything but. Dubbed 'Fabulous Fergie' in the papers as royal watchers screamed her name outside Clarence House on the night before her royal wedding, Sarah declared she was the "luckiest girl in the world " to be marrying a "handsome" prince. But now, as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor loses his royal titles and faces exiled in the shadows, Sarah finds herself without a home, worlds away from the lavish lifestyle she clung onto for decades. King Charles delivered the final blow to his younger brother and booted him out of Royal Lodge, the crumbling 30-room mansion the former couple have spent decades in together. Andrew lost his royal honours last week, confirmed in a blistering statement by the Palace - who made clear that Charles and Queen Camilla stand by victims and survivors of abuse in all forms. Virginia Guiffre, a Jeffrey Epstein victim who died by suicide earlier this year, accused Andrew of sexually assaulting her three times when she was a teenager, claims he vehemently denies. While Andrew is expected to move into a property on the sprawling Sandringham estate, Fergie has reportedly been told by the Palace to find her own living arrangements, cutting her out from the royal fold completely. Her ex-husband will apparently receive a six-figure pay-out for moving out of the Lodge, but Fergie, who famously found herself in excessive debt for years, has no such safety net to fall back on. The ex duchess has long admitted she is "terrible with money" and has faced bankrupcy in the past. With her net worth reportedly only coming in at £745,000, she seemingly wouldn't even be able to afford a terrace property in the town she's called home for decades - Windsor. A quick search on Rightmove pings up terrace houses going for anywhere between £795,000 to £1.87 million. Sarah has clawed herself back from financial struggles in in a number of ways, from starring in Weight Watchers advertising campaigns and flogging products on QVC to appearing on Loose Women and even writing saucy novels. But her wild spending habits and apparent love for excess are at odds with the current predicament she finds herself in, shut out from the pomp and paegentry of the palace. Fergie was said to have bailed out by the late Queen on "several occasions" after running up staggering debts. According to Andrew Lownie's new biography, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York , this included a payment of £500,000 in April 1994 when the bank Coutts "demanded £500,000 within 14 days". But how did somebody born to such wealth and privilege end up in such financial peril? Lownie, who spent four years researching Sarah and Andrew for his book, claims the ex duchess spent wildly during her marriage, splurging on staff, holidays, parties and flowers, in what he has described as a life of "opulent excess". Worst of all, he claims no thought was given as to how bills would be settled. Lownie detailed excesses such as paying £65,000 to have a personal trainer on permanent standby despite using their services on just two occasions in one year. Meanwhile, the big spender also allegedly ran up a bill of £51,000 at the luxury department store Selfridges, where she would make purchases through the firm's personal shopper and her old school pal, Pandora Delevigne. The Christmas before, two Selfridges staff members reportedly spent almost a full day in the VIP section, selecting hundreds of pricey items ahead of a decadent festive party. One source recalled: "Someone was dispatched every three or four days to pick up tights, face creams and expensive hair products". Sarah also once spent £14,000 in a month at a London wine merchant, according to the book. Naturally, Fergie's lavish spending caught up with her. After a bill of £500 went unpaid, a newsagent reportedly refused to supply the Duchess, while a local butcher, dry cleaning company and car hire firm are also listed among her creditors. Even the BP card used at petrol stations was allegedly confiscated due to unpaid arrears. Fergie amassed a £6,500 bill through using Queen Elizabeth's special mail service on "an almost daily basis". As well as mailing out letters and photographs, the Duchess would also send out opulent gifts, including silver letter openers, cufflinks and money clips. When it came to property, Fergie also made some unwise decisions, according to Lownie. Back in May 2009, the mother of two apparently signed a year's lease on a £3million mansion on Surrey's swish Wentworth Estate, at £8,000 per month. However, after the owners chose to move back in sooner than anticipated, while holding her to a six-month payment, the Duchess reportedly decided not to move in after all, setting up home at Windsor's Royal Lodge with ex-husband Prince Andrew instead. The result was, as Lownie put it, "£50,000 on a house she never lived in". A former staff member told Lownie that "greed and wastefulness that contributed to the duchess's financial downfall", claiming: "Every night she demands a whole side of beef, a leg of lamb and a chicken, which are laid out on the dining room table like a medieval banquet. It's a feast that would make Henry VIII proud." They added: "But often there is just her and her girls, Bea and Eugenie, and most of it is wasted. There is no attempt to keep it to have cold the next day. It just sits there all night, and the next day it's thrown away." Lownie also claims Fergie "would regularly miss flights that were not refundable", totting up thousands of pounds in unnecessary costs. One source also revealed that Fergie "thought nothing of arriving at an airport with 25 cases and paying between £800 and £4,000 in excess baggage. At least five of those cases were packed with toiletries and make-up. Another would be used solely for clothes hangers." Meanwhile, "personal trainers, hairdressers and Pilates instructors were paid hundreds of pounds an hour to wait for her to emerge for the day in the late afternoon. Her butler had to get in at 4.30am to put watercress on ice". In 1996, when Sarah and Andrew divorced, she moaned about money. "We got divorced because I had to go out to work and Andrew and I believed that it wasn't right for me to be commercial while I was still in the royal family ," she said, according to The Times. Sarah had written the first Budgie book while still married, "because there was no money for the second son. Or very little. When people say, 'You can't afford to do that,’ I say, who are you? It's my money. I'll do as I want." Sarah even borrowed money from late paedophile billionare Jeffey Epstein, with fresh claims about her relationship with the disgraced financer attracting huge scrutiny in recent weeks. She borrowed at least £15,000 from Esptein, with newly surfaced emails allegedly showing that she also asked for further sums: $50,000 (£37,240) to $100,000 (£78,475) from him to help with "small bills" and that she asked to visit his private island in the Caribbean. When an email recently emerged that she wrote to Epstein in 2011, shortly after publicly disowning him in a newspaper interview, many of the charities she had long worked with dropped her like a hot potato. Several of these charities announced they found it would be "inappropriate" to continue their professional ties with Sarah, who called Epstein a "supreme friend" in the email and apologised for her comments about him. Her spokesperson has claimed that Sarah wrote the email in question under extreme duress, with the convicted sex offender allegedly threatening to "destroy" her and her family after she said in the interview that she "abhors paedophilia". However, another email emerged later, from Jeffrey Epstein to his own legal team about her interview, which made a shocking allegation about Sarah "celebrating" his release from prison for sex crimes by bringing her daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who were 20 and 19 at the time, to visit him. A source from Sarah's circle says she and her daughters don't recollect this trip. It remains unclear where Sarah will live when she moves out of Royal Lodge, but it is understood that she won't be moving back in with Andrew. During "crunch talks" with the Palace before their bombshell statement, Sarah allegedly asked for Adelaide Cottage, the home Prince William , Princess Kate and their three children have just moved out of. The Waleses moved to Forest Lodge in recent days, and royal experts were left aghast at the suggestion. Just before the renewed scandals broke, Fergie sold a lavish London townhouse that she only bought in 2022. The townhouse in Belgravia, which she purchased for £4.2 million, had been reportedly rented out to tenants for a whopping £4,000 a week. However, she took a major hit when selling the home this summer, for £400,000 under the price she paid for it, according to Land Registry documents, the Daily Mail reports. Her spokesperson said that Sarah "wasn't looking to sell it," but this year she "was asked by the tenant to buy it, and it seemed like a good time to sell." "It's an investment property for her girls, and so the monies will be reinvested accordingly," the spokesperson continued. However, the Mail reports other sources claim the money from the sale may have been intended to be used to help finance Andrew and Sarah's life at Royal Lodge, before they were booted out. It's previously been reported that Fergie could potentially start a new life for herself overseas, with author Lownie discussing this prospect in an interview with Hello! magazine, before she and Andrew were ousted from Royal Lodge. Predicting that the pair would choose homes that would allow them to slip "under the radar", Lownie said that it was likely Sarah could move to Switzerland, where she and Andrew once owned a ski chalet in Verbier. This £20 million chalet was put on the market in 2022, allegedly to fund Andrew's out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre
