Meghan Markle claims she struggled in letter – despite attending $16k-a-year school and using nannies for child care

MEGHAN Markle claimed she struggled in a letter to the US Congress – despite attending a $16k-a-year private school and using nannies for child care.

The Duchess of Sussex claimed she lived off $5 Sizzler salads as a kid as she backed calls for paid parental leave.

But critics slammed the letter and point out her father was an Emmy award-winning lighting director and that she enjoyed a private education that cost $16,000-a-year, which was paid by her dad’s salary and state lottery win.

Royal commentator and former editor of International Who’s Who, Richard Fitzwilliams, told the : “Using the example of the $5 salad bar and how she had to struggle in the past is an attempt to link with the way so many families struggle to pay their bills. 

“Aspiring politicians use these sort of examples and it remains to be seen, since she was privately educated and her father was one of Hollywood’s top lighting directors, whether the audience she seeks are impressed by her account of how she had to struggle.

“She and her father are estranged as she is at the moment from the royal family. The issue she highlights is undoubtedly an important one, but many will sense a ruthless streak in her behaviour which needs moderating if she were ever to seek election.”

Though many back her call for universal paid parental leave, her letter to US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was lacking one very important figure – US President Joe Biden.

The President is trying to get his $3.5bn Build Back Better Agenda passed through Congress.

In the letter, Markle said she ate cheap salads and worked selling frozen yoghurt as a 13-year-old – but all the while she was being educated in exclusive LA Schools where alumnis include Elizabeth Taylor and July Garland.

She writes: “I grew up on the $4.99 salad bar at Sizzler – it may have cost less back then (to be honest, I can’t remember) – but what I do remember was the feeling: I knew how hard my parents worked to afford this because even at five bucks, eating out was something special, and I felt lucky.

“And as a Girl Scout, when my troop would go to dinner for a big celebration, it was back to that same salad bar or The Old Spaghetti Factory – because that’s what those families could afford. 

“I waited tables, babysat, and piecemealed jobs together to cover odds and ends,” Meghan writes.

“I worked all my life and saved when and where I could – but even that was a luxury – because usually it was about making ends meet and having enough to pay my rent and put gas in my car.”

Critics highlight that Markle was raised in the middle class suburb of Woodland Hills in a house bought by her Emmy award-winning dad.

She attended Hollywood’s private Little Red Schoolhouse, where staff fed students six different types of organic vegetables from the school garden each week, according to the Mail.

When she was nine, Markle’s dad won $750,000 in a lottery, which helped send her to the $16,000-a-year Immaculate Heart Catholic School – one of LA’s finest.

Markle regularly visited her dad who was working on the set of Married… with Children as a lighting director and who was believed to be earning $200,000 a year.

It comes as the Duchess, 40, said she and Prince Harry had been “overwhelmed” by the birth of their second child Lilibet.

In the same letter, she wrote: “Like any parents, we were overjoyed. Like many parents, we were overwhelmed.

“Like fewer parents, we weren’t confronted with the harsh reality of either spending those first few critical months with our baby or going back to work.

“We knew we could take her home, and in that vital (and sacred) stage, devote any and everything to our kids and to our family.  

“We knew that by doing so we wouldn’t have to make impossible choices about childcare, work, and medical care that so many have to make every single day.

“No family should be faced with these decisions.”