Let’s be honest: when you hear “the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia,” your brain probably does a little cash-register sound effect. Cha-ching. It’s like picturing a family that doesn’t just have a swimming pool—they have a private island where the pool is filled with imported glacier water and guarded by a pet cheetah named Fluffy. You can almost feel your own wallet getting lighter just by reading about them.
So, what’s the actual number?
Well, pinning down the exact net worth of the House of Saud is like trying to count the sprinkles on a giant donut—you know there’s a lot, but you’ll never get the same number twice. Estimates float around $1.4 trillion to $2 trillion for the entire extended family’s wealth. That’s not a typo. It’s a number so big that if you earned a million dollars every single day, it would take you nearly 5,500 years to catch up. Your great-great-great-great-grandkids would still be waiting for the deposit.
Compare it to your grocery list
Remember that time you tried to save $5 by buying the off-brand cereal? Yeah, the Royals don’t know that struggle. Their “budget meeting” is more like: “Should we buy the Entire country of Monaco, or just the nicer half?” The family’s wealth comes from oil—specifically, the planet’s biggest puddle of it under their feet. It’s like owning the world’s most expensive vending machine, and every time someone presses a button, a billion dollars rolls out. No wonder their bank accounts look like the final boss level of Monopoly.
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The "Gold-Plated" Everyday Life
You might think a rich person’s biggest problem is deciding which yacht to take to dinner. For the Saudi royals, it’s slightly different. They don’t just buy a car; they buy a $5 million Lamborghini Veneno and then leave it parked for a year because they forgot they had it. It’s like when you find a $20 bill in an old jacket—except the jacket is a private jet hangar, and the $20 is actually a diamond-encrusted Rolex. One prince famously ordered a $500,000 gold-plated iMac for his office. That’s a computer that costs more than your entire house, your car, your kid’s college fund, and the neighbor’s dog.
And let’s talk about vacations. You and I save up for a week at a beach resort in Florida. A Saudi prince once chartered an entire Boeing 747 to fly his 90 pet falcons first class to a hunting trip. Each falcon had its own seat. That’s better service than you get at the airport when they lose your luggage. You’re just trying to get an upgrade to economy plus, and he’s ordering tiny falcon-sized pillows.
The world's richest royal families ranked | lovemoney.com
The Royal Shopping Spree (Of Your Dreams)
Imagine walking into a mall and telling the manager, “I’ll take everything from that window to the food court.” That’s essentially what happens when the royals go shopping. They once spent $10 million on a single party for a prince’s graduation. Not a wedding—a graduation. Your graduation party had a sheet cake from Costco and some chips; theirs had a private concert by a pop star and a cake that looked like a Ferrari. The cake probably was a Ferrari made of chocolate. You know, casual.
But here’s the funny part
Despite all this mind-boggling cash, the Royal Family still deals with family drama just like you do. There’s the cousin who asks to borrow a few million for a “business idea” (which is just a new yacht). There’s the aunt who complains about the quality of the gold faucets in the guest bathroom. “Oh, this 24-carat? It’s so last season, darling.” It’s the same argument you have about who ate the last slice of pizza, but theirs is about a $100 million art collection hanging in the wrong hallway.
Worth 5 times more than Elon Musk and Bill Gates combined, the Saudi
And get this: the family is so large—about 15,000 members—that some of the less famous princes actually don’t have enough money to keep up. Yes, there are “poor” Saudi royals who get an allowance of only $800,000 a year. I know, it’s heartbreaking. They can only buy a small yacht, a couple of luxury cars, and maybe a modest villa in London. You and I are saving up for a down payment on a studio apartment; they’re scraping by on a “pittance” that would make you look like a Hollywood star.
The takeaway for us normal folks
So next time you’re stressing over a $10 monthly subscription fee, just remember: somewhere, a Saudi prince is arguing with his butler about whether the solid gold bidet is too “tacky.” Their net worth is a number that makes your head spin, but in the end, they still have to figure out what to have for dinner. It’s just that their dinner might be served on a plate made from a meteorite. We’re not that different—we both love family, good food, and complaining about the weather. The difference is they complain about the temperature in their private snow room (yes, that’s a real thing they build in the desert to escape the heat).
So the next time you see a news headline about the Saudi Royal Family’s net worth, just smile. Nod. And then go buy yourself a nice cup of coffee. You earned it. And hey, at least you don’t have to worry about a falcon stealing your first-class seat.
