The family trip happened just a few weeks after their luxurious vacation to Dubai, where parents Sue and Noel celebrated their wedding anniversary before their 23-year-old daughter Millie got married.
This latest holiday brings their total number of trips to 20 this year. While posting warm pictures from their vacation on social media, Sue also showed off her fancy Porsche.
But having 22 children is expensive, so some fans wonder how they manage to run such a large family and still afford expensive vacations. Known as Britain’s biggest family, they spend about £450 every week on groceries, using 16 pints of milk and four loaves of bread every day.
Sue, 48, admits that the work at home is “never-ending,” while Noel, 53, works hard in their busy family bakery. Besides their eldest son Chris, 34, the couple has Sophie, 29, Chloe, 28, Jack, 26, Daniel, 24, Luke, 22, Millie, 23, Katie, 20, James, 19, Ellie, 18, Aimee, 17, Josh, 16, Max, 14, Tillie, 13, Oscar, 11, Casper, 10, Hallie, 8, Phoebe, 7, Archie, 6, Bonnie, 4, and Heidie, 3. They also lost a son, Alfie, who was stillborn in 2014.
Despite the challenges the family has faced, the parents always manage to make things work. Since becoming famous for their large family, along with their successful bakery business, they also earn money from their popular social media accounts and TV deals. So, how do they afford to feed all their children?
Pie Business
The Radfords are independent and rely on the money from Noel’s family bakery business. The Radford Pie company, located near their home in Morecambe, Lancashire, sells fresh, healthy pies to people across the UK.
On their website, they mention: “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.
We have set up our online pie shop so we can share our very popular pies with you all. We’re a real family business with both and Sue working at the helm along with some of our children to help us.”
Noel is the main earner for the family. He has been a baker for 25 years and has worked in several bakeries, moving from trainee to manager to owner. It’s definitely a family affair, as Sue takes care of the orders when she’s not busy with the kids and is known as the “chief taste tester.”
Their daughter Chloe is the next generation of pie maker, having worked in the bakery for five years, while their son Daniel also helps with deliveries. The company did grow to handle online orders from all over the UK, but they were seriously affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In December 2022, the bakery had to close temporarily because Noel got coronavirus, which caused them to lose income during that time. Later in 2023, Noel told viewers of their show that he had baked his last loaf and was ‘retiring’ to spend more time with the kids.
“No more getting up early. Hang up my gloves, time to move on,” Noel told his wife, before putting kids Chloe and Luke in a friendly competition to see who would take over. However, Noel found it hard to help Sue around the house and realized he was bored with retirement. He asked his kids to give him his job back.
Noel told his wife: “I’m not past my best-by date yet, I think I’m going back.” When he asked to return to the bakery, Chloe answered: “You’re only an employee now.”
While it’s hard to estimate the exact profit without knowing the costs of making the pies, different sources say the bakery has made £9.2 million in sales. In one episode of their show, Noel also shared that he had earned £2.5 million from the pie shop since it first opened.
Net Worth
Sue and Noel depend on their own bakery business to support themselves, so they reportedly don’t claim any benefits apart from Child Benefit. They are said to have a net worth of £975,000, according to some sources, but they don’t see themselves as wealthy.
“Absolutely not, we’re definitely not secret millionaires,” Sue said when asked if the family was rich in a YouTube video. She added: “To me rich would be having the big mansion, the flash cars and quite a few hundred thousand in the bank, to me that would be rich but we are not that.” Meanwhile, they earn money from brand partnerships.
Their YouTube channel has a large following of 369,000 subscribers, and their Instagram has over 500K followers. They are also paid for their reality TV show, 22 Kids and Counting.
Sue told the Mirror earlier this year: “People just jump to conclusions. We don’t claim benefits – the pie company is very successful and so is our media business. We work hard but we’re not millionaires! The nastiness is upsetting though. We just want to be able to give our children the best possible life.”
“My mindset changed when my dad passed away. I thought, if we want to be able to go on holiday and make memories with our children, then why should we be judged?
You should live life how you want and not how other people want you to live it. If you’re happy and the kids are happy, then what does it matter what anybody else thinks?”
Ten Bed Home
The Radfords live in a 10-bedroom house that they bought for £240,000 in 2004, and it’s a bit cramped for them. There was talk about them leaving the three-story house, which was changed from a former care home, but now they have big plans for renovations.
“I think a while back I did really want to move house, before we did the house up. But since doing the house up we’re not moving and actually we’ve got plans for the house, quite big plans,” said Sue. “We will be sharing them with you once the architect does his thing.”
If the family ever decided to move, they would want to go somewhere peaceful or sunny. Noel added: “I think if we were to move house what we would really love to do is move abroad or move to the lakes.”
Charging Rent
Some of the older kids have moved out of the family home, but a few are still living there as adults. They don’t live for free, though, as the older children 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 am trying to save up for my own house at the moment,” explained Chloe. Sue added: “We’ve always said if you want to buy somewhere, rent is dead money so we would rather you saved that money up and stayed at home for a bit longer.
But me Noel and I believe they should pay board, if they are earning, we’ve always been brought up to pay board.”
[Updated: 04/02/2025]
