Just a quick Question: Where does the "royal family" get all its money? Is it tax/public money or their private fortune? If the latter, what happens if it runs out? Thanks.

i believe its a combination of tax and personal wealth built over the years. + property and the fact they buy NOTHING of their own.

But the money they have is NOTHING compared to what they had.

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I think she has about £7 billion, and as I understand it, Parliament give the Royal Family £20 million a year and just under £8 million to herself.

Then again, they've got an unbelievable amount of priceless artwork and stuff.

yeah the Queen and certain royal's get a certain percentage to live off that is decided upon by the government.

Also the Queen and a lot of other royal's get money from investments and other areas, for instance Prince Charles is Duchy of Cornwall, basically there are a bunch of farms and other businesses that Charles gets the profits from.

As ruthervain pointed out the money they get now is tiny compared to what they used to get...

To be honest, I really don't care about the royal family. They probably get their money from selling each others' stories to the tabloids.

They also train horses, I think. Or maybe they just marry them, I forget.

Do they get some of the proceeds from the ticket sales when you go visit places like Windsor? ...Does Windsor have tickets? I forgot...

Lord Chamberlain said in 1993 that estimates of £100 million and upwards were 'grossly overstated'.

The vast majority of the royals' money is in property. In terms of disposable income, they don't actually have very much; the Queen can't exactly pawn the Crown Jewels. Someone like Bill Gates, or any fairly wealthy businessman probably has much more cash, and much more freedom to use it.

The Windsor Private Estate and Royal Farm don't make any money for The Queen but are a net outgoing. Ventures such as the Windsor Farm Shop provide employment locally and support the agricultural industry. Any profits from the Farm Shop will be used to support the running of the Royal Farms and Private Estates.

The Queen owns Balmoral and Sandringham, both inherited from her father. She also owns the stud at Sandringham (with a small amount of land in Hampshire). She owns no property outside the United Kingdom.

After a bit of digging...

The Queen and the household has four sources of income:
- The Civil List
- Grant-in-aid
- Privy Purse
- private income

The first two are not taxed, the Privy Purse is covers official expenditure, and private income is taxed like any other.

The Civil list is the money provided by Parliament, about 70% of which goes to pay staff. The civil list was created by George III in 1760. The Queen's civil list has been fixed at £7.9 per annum until 2011. You can find the full details of Royal Expenditure someplace, they're openly published.
Prince Phillip is the only other that recieves from the civil list, everyone else is provided for by the Privy Purse.

The Tower of London and Hampton Court, and most other palaces, are paid for by visitor admissions.

What is the point of them? Why doesn't Britain just abolish all the nonsensical notions of monarchy already?

I think that they are mostly symbolic, Freelancer.



I love it when you use topical humor! It's just like watching Murphy Brown.

The monarchy draws in a lot of tourists and the gain from tourism is greater than the money going to supporting the monarchy. If Britain was just another republic, we'd still have the dozens of ancient castles around the place, but fewer tourists to mope around them.

Also by abolishing the monarchy, Britain would abolish the Commonwealth. Canada and Australia might not be too pleased about that.

The House of Lords, on the other hand, is an archaism that ought to have been abolished decades ago. Its power and influence will almost certainly peter out slowly.

Tourism? You're serious? Oh, brother.

And as for abolishing the commonwealth, you won't see me shedding a tear. It's not like the commonwealth accomplishes much of anything, anyway.

You'd be surprised. People paying stupid amounts of cash to say "oooh... aaah..." and get wet is unbelievably common. And it does generate a ludicrous amount of income.