THEY are parents to Britain’s biggest family with 22 kids – but Sue and Noel Radford have a super-sized lifestyle to go with it.
From taking 24 holidays in two years to their 10-bedroom mansion with its £27k pool, many people may be left scratching their heads as to how they afford their millionaire lifestyle.
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Stay-at-home mum Sue, who claims they have spent over £1million raising their children, recently hit back at trolls who criticised the family’s extravagant spending as she insists they work hard.
“At the end of the day, it’s our money,” she said, speaking to Femail. “We work really hard for what we have and if we want to spend it on whatever we want to spend it on, we will.”
The family have been on 24 holidays within the last 24 months, including Disneyland Paris over New Year – something most of us can only dream of.
What’s more, she and her husband Noel have shown off their epic outdoor cinema, TV bed and a pricey £6.5k fancy fridge.
And this is in addition to their luxury car collection, which includes a £30,000 Range Rover car, a £80,000 Porsche Cayenne E-Hybrid Quarzite and a campervan which retails for £40,000.
So how DO they pay for their luxury lifestyle?
Well, there are many ways the Radfords support themselves, including Noel’s bakery, The Radford Pie Company, YouTube, sponsored posts, TV and their side hustles.
Here, we break the finances down…
The family pie shop
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The Radfords don’t rely on benefits and support themselves with the proceeds of Noel’s bakery, The Radford Pie company.
On their website, it says: “We have owned our own lovely bakery since 1999 which is how we manage to provide for (and feed) our huge and expanding family as well as for the local people of Heysham and Morecambe.”
The business is a family affair, with Noel at the helm, and children Chloe and Daniel having helped out in the past.
The family have now expanded their business to cater for online orders made from around the UK, and were recently forced to splash out on a huge new bakery as the pie business grew.
In a previous episode of their TV show, Noel revealed that he’s made over £2.5 million since they started the business in 1999.
But, without accurate and up to date figures, it would be difficult to estimate the company’s gross profit.
Kids pay rent
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Sue and Noel currently have the majority of their kids living at home but the three few – Chris, 34, Sophie, 30, and more recently Chloe, 28, and Millie, 22 – have now moved out and are living with their partners.
Living at home still is Jack, 26, Daniel, 24, Luke,23, Katie, 21, James, 20, Ellie, 18, Aimee, 17, Josh, 16, Max, 15, Tillie, 13, Oscar, 12, Casper, 11, Hallie, eight, Phoebe, seven, Archie, six, Bonnie, five and Heidie, three.
Sadly the couple’s 17th child Alfie was still born on July 6, 2014.
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The older kids, who are presumably working at least part-time, don’t get a free ride as they’re made to pay a small amount of rent to their parents.
“Us older ones do pay a little bit of board.
“Granted it’s not a lot but I’m also trying to save up for my own house at the moment,” Chloe said in a video on the YouTube channel.
With Sue adding: “We’ve always said if you want to buy somewhere, renting is a bit of dead money, so we’d rather you saved that money up and stayed at home a bit longer.
“I also do believe they should pay board if they are earning. We’ve always been brought up by our parents that we had to pay board.”
TV shows
The supersized family first appeared on the Channel 4 documentary television programme 15 Kids and Counting in 2012.
And just recently, the Radfords opened their doors again to Channel 5 to film 22 Kids and Counting show, with the latest season starting on Sunday.
While it’s never been disclosed how much they earn from their TV appearances, Sue has mentioned how their “media business” earns them extra money.
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Brand expert Andy Barr believes Sue and Noel have been paid less than £10,000 for each show.
He told the Daily Mail: “The typical fee per episode is going to be in the thousands rather than the tens or hundreds of thousands that people often think is the case with TV shows of this nature.
“If they continue to get commissioned for a fourth or fifth season, then they are going to be able to command a higher fee.”
He currently estimates that the Radford family makes £5,000 an episode.
New book
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Just this week, Sue took to Instagram following the new season of their TV show to reveal they are bringing out their very first book.
The Radfords: Making Life Count will be released on February 29 and will share behind-the-scenes secrets about the Lancashire-based family.
She said: “We feel so lucky to be kicking off the year with our forth series and as well as the show we have something very exciting launching in 2024…
“We are thrilled to announce you can now pre-order our first book and it will be available to buy in stores from 29th Feb 2024.”
Sue continued: “So many of you have asked over the years if we’ll ever bring out a book and it’s something we’ve wanted to do for a long time and now finally we’ve found time amongst the chaos of daily life to do it!”
YouTube empire
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Creating content for YouTube can be quite a lucrative career so it’s not surprising Sue shares regular content on her channel.
The Radfords created the family channel in 2018 and revealed they make money from brand partnerships on social media.
Having an impressive subscriber count of 367,000 with views ranging from 50,000 to 1,000,000, the couple could be making some money from AdSense – revenue generated from ads.
YouTubers can earn anywhere from 7p to 23p and more per view on a video, depending on engagement and click-through rates. According to Social Blade, a public analytics website, they’ve had 67,459,000 views on their videos, which means they could have earned over a million in passive income since they started the channel in 2018.
On top of this, they’ve done sponsored videos from the likes of The Food Warehouse, TalkTalk, Emma mattresses and Zanussi.
It means they could be making additional thousands per sponsored video they upload on their channel, with Jamie claiming it could go up to £10,000 per video.
Paid Instagram Posts
Sue and Noel’s Instagram account boasts 518,000 followers – no doubt as a result of their popularity thanks to their Channel 5 TV show.
With such a huge following, it’s no surprise that they’ve worked with many giant companies for sponsored posts.
The list includes George at Asda, EE, The Next Step, Emma mattresses and more.
Speaking to Femail, the co-founder of specialist influencer marketing agency Buttermilk, Jamie Ray, said the couple could charge up to £15,000 for a single post on their feed.
According to the publication, the family have shared 18 sponsored posts on their Instagram feed since 2020.
If they earned as much as £15,000, this would bring the figure to roughly £270,000 in three years.
Side Hustle
Sue and Noel are also directors of the TRF21 Limited business, which was set up in 2019.
Listed on Companies House, it’s described as “media representation services”.
Finance expert Rick Smith, Managing Director of Forbes Burton, told the Daily Mail: “It’s worth noting that TRF21 Ltd has an SIC (industry classification) of 73120 [which means it is involved in] ‘Media Representation Services.
“Radford’s Pie Company Ltd has one of 47290 [which means] ‘Other retail sale of food in specialised stores’. This would indicate the companies had been set up for specific reasons.”
In their statement from January 2022, it appears Noel took out £276,533 and repaid £152,301 back in. While Sue received £1 and put £81,834 back in. This ‘Repayment’ model is not unusual for small businesses, according to a financial expert at Menzies LLP speaking to Femail.
The reserves in the company increased from £25,500 to £72,350 in the last year, which suggests they made profits of £46,800.
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