How rich is the Queen

It's difficult to avoid the royal wedding, so, as this blog is about money, let's look at the wealth of the royals, starting with the queen, and one of her favourite castles.

Her private wealth is estimated at $500 million.
This comes from property, including Balmoral Castle in Scotland (above),  stud farms, a fruit farm, and marine land throughout the UK, extensive art and fine jewellery and one of the world's largest stamp collections, started by her grandfather.

In the lists of the rich $500 million is not very impressive.  That is because most of her wealth is tied to her position and belongs to the Crown Estate and not to her personally. That includes $10 billion worth of property, plus Buckingham Palace, worth an extra $5 billion approx, and the royal art collection.
She also receives from the government an annual  stipend of $12.9 million.

Of course, that $500 million personal wealth is only an estimate.  It would be odd if someone in possession of that amount of personal money did not follow the suggestions of her advisers and place some of her money off shore.  I suspect we are looking at the tip of the iceberg here, because of course the figure given concerns only those assets that can be readily traced.

(I've given value in dollars, following Forbes research).

Tomorrow, let's look at what we know of the financial affairs of her son, the heir to the throne, Prince Charles, and his sons, including the bridegroom to be, Prince William.