86 million pounds was how much the Royal Family received in 2021.
117 million dollars.

Looking into this, the numbers are pretty interesting.

First up, most people don’t actually know how the Royal Family technically makes money.

It’s from the Crown Estate, which are properties owned by the United Kingdom, but technically controlled by the queen.

Th Crown Estate owns 7,936 different properties in England and Wales, which have an estimated value of 23 billion dollars.

14 billion being administrative properties.
9 billion being residential.

The properties make money from various forms of revenue, which in 2021 totalled 487 million pounds or 667 million dollars.

The monarchy gets 15% of the revenue normally, with the UK getting the other 85%.

That normally gets the monarchy about 25-40 million per year, but it was raised to 25% a few years ago to fund a renovation for Buckingham Palace, which ends in 2027 and will revert back to 15%.

The cost for the UK for the monarchy isn’t that high in the grand scheme of things.

The UK in 2021 spent 1.05 trillion pounds, brought in 819 billion pounds in revenue and had a deficit of 234 billion.

The 30-40 million the monarch receives in a normal year is such a small piece to what the actual budget is, it’s almost not worth mentioning.

Just for a quick comparison with the US, the federal government spends 7.5 million dollars a year on upkeep for the Washington Monument, with another 7.5 million provided by the Rubinstein Fund.

That’s one monument in the US of many, which has a cost comparable to the Royal Family upkeep.

So does that justify it?

The bigger issue is security, where the Royal Family is expensive to offer safety for.

The UK has never disclosed the actual cost for policing and safety for the monarch, but analysis put it at 100 million pounds a year.

An example of this was the wedding of Meghan Markle and Harry, where it cost 32 million dollars.

This was mainly funded by the monarch and not the government, but the security cost were estimated to be 10 million.

That sounds bad, but factoring in the amount of celebrities/wealthy people who flew in for the wedding, merchandise sold in the UK and people going out to witness it, it likely was a profitable thing for the government.

This makes a case that when looking at everything, the UK letting the monarch keep revenue from the fund isn’t so bad.

My feeling? It’s not so bad, but also unneeded.

Harry and Meghan Markle moved to America and stopped accepting money from the Crown.

Since that time they’ve had the following.

A 125 million dollar deal with Netflix.
A 25 million dollar deal with Spotify.
A merchandise line deal valued at millions.
Undisclosed book deals, with advances expected to be over 50 million.

Harry and Meghan will within the next couple years make over a quarter billion dollars and continue making money off the brand.

If the Royal Family was cut off, someone like Prince Charles, Kate Middleton, Prince William or really anyone in the family could land a book deal and get anywhere from 10 to 100 million, depending on which one it is.

They could also likely just off the license of their image and image of family members make millions.

For that reason, I think it’s probably time to cut the cord with the whole monarch thing and the UK letting them keep money from public lands.

I don’t really think they bring in much revenue, due to the reality people will still visit the palaces and so on, with or without them.

That said, Rest In Peace to Queen Elizabeth. The 20th Century is now over.