How Rich Is The Queen? What Happens To Elizabeth's Fortune When She Dies

England's Queen Elizabeth is very, very rich. So just how rich she is? She makes American billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg seem like Average Joes.

Queen Elizabeth recently made the unusual decision to skip Christmas Day church services, after suffering from a bad head cold for several weeks. The palace has said there is nothing to worry about it, but if the queen was nearing her final days, she would have a lot of money to comfort her and pass on to her heirs.

Queen Elizabeth is the world's longest serving royal and during her many decades on the throne she has put away a massive fortune in part because of growing land and real estate values in the United Kingdom. Her nominal assets were worth about 22.8 billion pounds, or $34.8 billion, in 2015, Reuters reported.

But the queen's riches are a little more complicated than they might sound. The Crown Estate, with a capital value of 11.5 billion pounds, is owned on behalf of the nation during the duration of the monarch's reign and does actual not belong to the queen. The royal estate also includes the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, vast private estates with a combined value of 1.3 billion pounds. These figures don't include the unknown value of extravagant royal residences such as Buckingham Palace and Windsor.

Elizabeth does, of course, have some spending money. The queen's public income, roughly based on 15 percent of the Crown Estate's annual profit, came to 37.9 million pounds in 2015. That's a 22 percent increase from two years before. In all, her personal net worth is estimated to reach $500 million.

She has personal property, as well. Her private residence in the Scottish Highlands was purchased by Queen Victoria in 1848 and covers 50,000 acres. She also owns stud farms, a fruit farm, personal art, fine jewelry and one of the world’s largest stamp collections, started by her royal relatives in the early 19th century, Forbes reported.

Prince Charles, the queen's son and heir to the throne, has his own fortune. His income was valued at 871 million pounds in March 2015.