Good luck to Harry and Meghan in their quest for financial independence – they’ll need it

If their new website is to believed, financial independence can be achieved by screengrabbing inspirational quotes from dead self-help gurus

Even now, twenty-four hours after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex published their intention to start “working towards financial independence” at the ages of 35 and 38 respectively, their brand new website, sussexroyal.com, does not feature highly in the Google search results for “working towards financial independence”.

For those seeking to work towards financial independence, the collective wisdom of the internet still offers frankly parochial advice: live a frugal lifestyle, grow your earned income, invest in the stock market. That sort of thing. It is, indeed, distinctly possible that the Duke and Duchess’s work towards financial independence has not yet driven the newly financially independent* (*working towards) couple to google the phrase “working towards financial independence”. I say this because there does seem to be a rather large disconnect between what is considered the conventional means by which to achieve financial independence, and the methods the happy couple appear to be pursuing.

To take a cursory glance around sussexroyal.com is to find oneself suddenly cast as one of Alan Sugar’s evil henchmen in the interviews round of The Apprentice, unable to find exactly where the business plan is. “Live a frugal lifestyle” certainly doesn’t appear. What does, on the other hand, are many photographs of the happy couple pointing at African children, juxtaposed with inspirational quotes from various dead self-help gurus.

While the Duke and Duchess of Sussex may not yet have fully worked out how to achieve financial independence, it seems, they have worked out a lot besides: “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex,” proclaims their new website, “believe in the shared strength and spirit of Community ... The Duke and Duchess of Sussex recognise the unique perspectives through which different communities view the world ... The Duke and Duchess of Sussex believe that for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows ... The Duke and Duchess of Sussex believe that junk food tastes so good because it’s bad for you. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do.”

And who among us can say that’s not the main thing? Naturally, we wish them well on their new adventures in the world of personal finance. Admittedly, none of their ideas have featured prominently on Radio 4’s The Money Programme in the years I’ve been listening, but who’s to say they are not the pioneers this age of low-interest rates so urgently requires?

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” So spoke Desmond Tutu, apparently while staring into the eyes of Meghan Markle, while she stared into the eyes of her baby son, in a loving snap featured on the “Community” page of sussexroyal.com. Surely, a mantra for the benefits of compound interest?

I confess to not having a clue what I am meant to think about the happy couple’s semi-retirement from their highly lucrative non-jobs while still in their thirties. The conventional wisdom seems to be that they’re happy to have Mr and Mrs Taxpayer pony up the cash for various seven-figure home improvement projects they’ve just had done, and then jack in their ribbon cutting duties by way of a thank you. But then, I have always been somewhat mystified by the assumed right of the monarchy-loving British public to inflict a life of misery on the people they appear to adore. We pay for them, who do they think they are, refusing to give us a steady supply of photographs of their two-month-old baby? It’s a disgrace!

There’s also the fact that Prince Harry’s mother was killed while being pursued by paparazzi photographers, and is now watching his wife is being carefully crafted into a public hate figure. There genuinely does appear to be a sense that Prince Harry ought to have more respect for the industry that killed his mother. Best of luck with that.

So there’s a lot going into this particular moral melting pot and frankly, it’s not one that I have any interest at all in stirring or sniffing. Maybe the pair of them do indeed want to have their cake and eat it? Who knows? Who cares?

But in the meantime, Harry and Meghan’s journey towards financial independence doesn’t appear to be getting off to the most auspicious of starts.