Squiz Shortcuts - The Royal Family's wealth

Your Shortcut to the Royal Family’s wealth

When Prince Harry turns 40 on Sunday, he’ll inherit millions of dollars, making him the latest in a long line of super-rich royals with multiple income streams. So in this Squiz Shortcut, we'll look at:

• the wealth of the British Royal Family

• where they get their money from 

• and how they spend it.

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How much will Prince Harry inherit?
Around $14 million from his late great-grandmother, the Queen Mother, which has been kept in a trust fund for him. 

What a generous great-grandma! 
Yep, reports put the Queen Mother’s personal wealth at $110 million when she died in 2002, which was made through savvy investments, real estate, a collection of fine paintings, rare china, and antique jewels, including a necklace that once belonged to Marie Antoinette. In 1994, she put around $30 million into a trust fund to be divvied up between her great-grandchildren.

Does Harry get the same amount as Prince William? 
Nope - reports say Harry gets more. The Queen Mother specified who got how much, and also when they’d get it. Under the rules, the children could access part of their share when they turned 21yo, and the rest when they turned 40yo. Harry gets more money to compensate him for being the ‘spare’. William is first in line to be King and gets most of his private income from a royal estate called the Duchy of Cornwall. 

What’s that?
It’s a huge financial and land portfolio in the South West of England that was set up in the year 1337 for the male heir to the throne, and it generates a tidy $40 million per year in rental income. It includes huge tracts of farmland, medieval castles, and pubs, as well as commercial sites like shops and offices - and it has some prime properties in London too. 

Must be nice…
Well, Harry’s not doing too badly under his own steam… His impending windfall will add to the income he and his wife Meghan have made independently since they moved to Los Angeles after stepping back from Royal duties in 2020. Through content deals with Netflix, Meghan’s podcast Archetypes, and Harry’s memoir Spare, the Sussexes are said to be worth $95 million.

How much is the Royal Family worth?
The British Royal Family is worth tens of billions of dollars. Their assets include Sandringham House in Norfolk and Balmoral Castle in Scotland, investments, racehorses, expensive cars, fine art and jewels… There’s a fund that looks after all of these assets called the Crown Estate. It’s worth $31 billion and last year, there was a big spike in its profits thanks to Royal sea beds being leased for offshore wind farms. 

Wait - the sea beds belong to the Crown?
They sure do. The sea beds around the British coast have been the property of the Crown since the beginning of the monarchy, but the decision to allow them to be leased to generate Royal revenue from wind and wave power was given by the Blair Government in 2004.  

Do the Royals own Buckingham Palace and the Crown Jewels?
No, they’re held in trust for Britain. Likewise, the Crown Estate isn’t privately owned by the reigning monarch, so King Charles can’t sell any assets or keep all the profits for himself. 

Who gets the profits from the Crown Estate?
The profits go to the UK Treasury, and the King is paid a percentage of them each year from the public purse. That payment is called the Sovereign Grant and it’s calculated at 12% of the Crown Estate’s profits. Last year, the amount paid to the King was £86.3 million, which is about $170 million.

Does Charles keep all of the Sovereign Grant?
No. He uses it to pay the other 10 working Royals in his new slimmed-down monarchy for the over 2,300 yearly engagements they carry out, hundreds of events the palace hosts, and property maintenance. For example, Buckingham Palace is currently having repairs done and that cost $40 million last year. 

Is that the King’s only source of income?
No. His private income comes from an estate called the Duchy of Lancaster, a super-old property portfolio set up in the year 1265 by King Henry III for his son Edmund, that’s been passed down from monarch to monarch ever since. It’s made up of land in Lancashire and Yorkshire, as well as some fancy properties in central London, and it makes on average, $40 million in profit every year. 

Does he pay tax on that money?
The Duchies don’t pay corporate tax because they’re not classed as corporations - but the profits from Duchies are considered to be private income, so the King and William both pay income tax on that money. There have been repeated calls over the years for the Royal Duchies to be transferred to public ownership, given they were set up in medieval times in a feudal system that’s well out of date today.

What is the King worth?
King Charles’ personal fortune is £610 million, or about $1.2 billion according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List… 

What about Will and Kate?
Reports estimate William’s worth to be around $180 million. It increased big time after he inherited the Duchy of Cornwall from his father.

What do the Royals spend their money on?
Lately, there’s been medical expenses for the King and Princess Kate who’ve both been undergoing treatment for cancer. The Royals have their own department for this - it’s called The Royal Medical Household and it retains doctors to look after the King and the rest of the family. 

How much is their travel bill?
Last year, the Royals spent $8.25 million on travel costs. Charles and Camilla’s 4-day visit to Kenya was the most expensive of those, which came in at nearly $330,000. The King and Queen are due to travel to Australia and Samoa next month, and it’s trips like these that their travel budget has to cover. 

How many functions do they host?
The Royal’s finance report for last year states that they put on 400 events for 105,000 guests, which included 118 afternoon teas, 8 garden parties and 50 dinners. 

Do they give much money to charity?
Yes, they give a lot of their time and money to charities. Reports show that the late Queen alone helped raise more than $2.75 billion for the 600 charities she was the patron of, and King Charles’ Charitable Fund has also donated more than $197 million to charities since he set it up in 1979. All up, the Royals support more than 2,400 charities across the UK and another 600 worldwide.

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