A graduate says she’ll “never settle into a full-time job” because she racks up $96k a year from her side hustles - including TikTok, picnic planning, pet-sitting and nannying.
Grace Ryu, 23, quit her full-time job in March 2023 after missing out on a “work-life balance”.
She started trying out freelance work in any industry that took her fancy, like events, content creation and childcare.
Her parents let her live rent-free in their old house since they moved to Korea in October 2023 - allowing Grace to fund her “shopping addiction”, travel and put money into savings.
Grace, a freelancer from Houston, Texas, said: “I want so many different passive streams of income because there’s still so much I want to try - I’ll never go back to a nine-to-five.
“It’s really easy to feel burnt out in a full-time job - I loved working in hospitality and tech sales, but I had no work-life balance.
“I find it much more fun being able to work from wherever I want - but don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely a hustle.”
Grace studied for a major in recreation, park and tourism sciences at Texas A&M University - graduating in December 2021.
She worked a number of jobs while she was studying - including being a ranch hand at a bull farm and working in a restaurant.
Thinking she might settle into a nine-to-five in tourism and hospitality, she picked up more restaurant shifts after uni.
But realising she wanted more downtime - she quit to become a live-in nanny for a family in New York, in summer 2022.
She said: “I decided to become a full-time nanny so I could live in New York for a while.
“But after two months, I decided to come home to Texas - and I still work seasonally as a part-time nanny for that family.
“I wanted to try other things out - and pursue a career related to my major.”
In August 2022, Grace took a job in tech sales - even getting promoted to account manager in January 2023.
She worked there for a total of eight months, deciding to build up streams of income on the side.
“I became a dogwalker, and started creating content,” she said. “I got very ambitious about all these different things, and decided the best time to try them would be while I’m still young.
“Balancing all these different things wasn’t working for me, though - and I was starting to feel burnt out.
“The beauty of working lots of different side hustles is I can do a different job from one day to the next - I love the variety of it.”
In March 2023, Grace started earning income from nine freelance jobs - and she now considers herself a User Generated Content (UGC) creator, influencer, TikTok partner, affiliate marketer, picnic planner, babysitter, dog walker, AirBnB arbiter and digital product seller.
This gives her a total of $96k (£77092.80) per year - and she uses the majority of the money to travel.
She said: “I’m currently living rent-free at my parents’ house - they moved to Korea and left it to me.
"I now rent it out seasonally on AirBnB.
Grace Ryu, 23, quit her full-time job in March 2023 after missing out on a “work-life balance”.
She started trying out freelance work in any industry that took her fancy, like events, content creation and childcare.
Her parents let her live rent-free in their old house since they moved to Korea in October 2023 - allowing Grace to fund her “shopping addiction”, travel and put money into savings.
Grace, a freelancer from Houston, Texas, said: “I want so many different passive streams of income because there’s still so much I want to try - I’ll never go back to a nine-to-five.
“It’s really easy to feel burnt out in a full-time job - I loved working in hospitality and tech sales, but I had no work-life balance.
“I find it much more fun being able to work from wherever I want - but don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely a hustle.”
Grace studied for a major in recreation, park and tourism sciences at Texas A&M University - graduating in December 2021.
She worked a number of jobs while she was studying - including being a ranch hand at a bull farm and working in a restaurant.
Thinking she might settle into a nine-to-five in tourism and hospitality, she picked up more restaurant shifts after uni.
But realising she wanted more downtime - she quit to become a live-in nanny for a family in New York, in summer 2022.
She said: “I decided to become a full-time nanny so I could live in New York for a while.
“But after two months, I decided to come home to Texas - and I still work seasonally as a part-time nanny for that family.
“I wanted to try other things out - and pursue a career related to my major.”
In August 2022, Grace took a job in tech sales - even getting promoted to account manager in January 2023.
She worked there for a total of eight months, deciding to build up streams of income on the side.
“I became a dogwalker, and started creating content,” she said. “I got very ambitious about all these different things, and decided the best time to try them would be while I’m still young.
“Balancing all these different things wasn’t working for me, though - and I was starting to feel burnt out.
“The beauty of working lots of different side hustles is I can do a different job from one day to the next - I love the variety of it.”
In March 2023, Grace started earning income from nine freelance jobs - and she now considers herself a User Generated Content (UGC) creator, influencer, TikTok partner, affiliate marketer, picnic planner, babysitter, dog walker, AirBnB arbiter and digital product seller.
This gives her a total of $96k (£77092.80) per year - and she uses the majority of the money to travel.
She said: “I’m currently living rent-free at my parents’ house - they moved to Korea and left it to me.
"I now rent it out seasonally on AirBnB.
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FunTranscript
00:00 You, my friend, are asking the right question.
00:02 And my little tagline is "I have 7 jobs to fund my shopping addiction because...
00:05 make more to spend more, right?"
00:07 Anyways, this is my most up-to-date streams of income/jobs,
00:09 and I wrote them all on the side because I can't say them all off the top of my head.
00:12 So number 1, I am a UGC creator.
00:14 This is when brands will pay me for my content to make for their platforms,
00:17 and they'll use it either organically on their accounts or for ads.
00:20 Number 2, I'm a micro-influencer, so this is when brands will pay me
00:23 to post on my platforms to my audience so I get like sponsorships or brand deals.
00:27 Number 3, I'm a TikTok creator that falls under the TikTok Creativity Beta Program,
00:30 so this is when TikTok pays us as creators to make content that has a lot of engagement, lots of views.
00:35 So thank y'all so much for all the engagement on the "Trust Fund Baby" video
00:39 because I think I will make a lot of money off that video.
00:41 Number 4, I'm also a luxury picnic business owner and also like an event planner.
00:45 That was the first business I ever started, and that's when I realized, "Am I an entrepreneur?"
00:49 So yes, for the luxury picnic business, I started that in college when I was furloughed at the hotel
00:52 during the pandemic of 2020, and I was broke, I was bored, I was like, "What can I do?"
00:56 So I created this business model, and it worked out perfectly during COVID,
00:59 and it's since grown so much that we've hired a team of college students
01:02 to operate the picnic for us as our picnic coordinators.
01:04 I no longer operate the picnics for the physical setup and teardowns.
01:08 Instead, I just oversee the business.
01:10 Number 5, I'm also a TikTok shop affiliate, so I post videos with the tagged product,
01:13 and I make commission off of that.
01:15 Number 6, I'm also an Amazon influencer, so I post videos about Amazon products,
01:19 link people to my storefront, and I make commissions off of that as well.
01:21 I'm also a pet sitter and dog walker.
01:24 I also babysit a nanny, so I babysit for a few families in Houston,
01:27 but I also get flown out to New York to nanny for a family I used to work for.
01:30 And lastly, I have digital products, so I have two currently.
01:33 One is my content creation ebook, and the other one is my Airbnb arbitrage letter on intent.
01:38 Those are all linked to my bio.
01:39 Also in my bio, I have a business insider article,
01:41 where I share in-depth of my different streams of income and a breakdown of each one.
01:45 So that was a quick recap of what I really do.
01:47 Hi, I'm Grace from the viral "Trust, Fun, Baby" video,
01:50 and let me just break down that video because I've been getting so many DMs,
01:53 so many comments about it.
01:54 Let's just start from the very beginning.
01:55 I am not a "Trust, Fun, Baby."
01:57 It was an April Fool's joke, and I don't make $80,000 a month.
02:01 I purposely made this video as believable as possible because I knew it had the potential
02:04 to go viral, but I also was very, very intentional with every single thing I included in here.
02:09 So let's break it down together.
02:11 Starting off with this beautiful necklace.
02:12 I included this because I knew so many people would ask me about necklace details,
02:16 and this is from Rowan.
02:17 I got it custom-made.
02:18 I love him so much.
02:19 And then that next part, I talked about the different properties that I own,
02:22 which are in Houston, New York, and Korea.
02:24 First of all, this is my parents' house, and so I don't own any properties.
02:29 I'm actually living at their house.
02:30 And I purposely said I live in Houston majority of the time because A, it's true,
02:34 and B, because people would say, "Oh my god, you're a 'Trust, Fun, Baby.'
02:37 What's there to do in Houston?"
02:38 And if I was a real "Trust, Fun, Baby," I would not be in Houston.
02:41 I would be in Europe, in Asia, or in New York.
02:44 As for this shot with the New York apartment,
02:46 I used to work as a live-in nanny for a family in New York,
02:48 and I now fly up periodically to go work with them, and so this is their apartment.
02:52 I purposely didn't add too many shots of their apartment because of their own safety.
02:55 And then for that next part where I said I go to Korea 8 to 10 times a year,
02:58 that was completely false.
02:59 I do not go that often.
03:01 And this clip is not my Korea apartment.
03:03 It's actually a luxury dental clinic lounge.
03:06 Part where I said I always pay for business, that was completely false.
03:10 I have, yes, written business a few times, and I'm very fortunate,
03:13 but that was all because of upgrades and points.
03:15 This is absolutely a luxury for me,
03:17 and I would, if I had the money, pay for business every single time.
03:21 And then for the next part where I said I fly privately every time I ride domestic flights,
03:24 that was also false.
03:25 Your girl cannot afford that.
03:27 And if you know, you know, this is actually Southwest,
03:29 which is why I kind of put that into the clip.
03:31 I did include one shot of me riding privately, which was this one.
03:34 To give y'all some context, I have ridden privately once,
03:37 but that was through the family that I work for in New York.
03:39 For this, I was honestly laughing so hard when I saw the comments of people saying,
03:43 "You're a trust fund baby and you can't even round up," or "You're only paying 20%."
03:46 I just thought it was low-key hilarious because if I was a true trust fund baby,
03:50 I would absolutely just round this up to like 200.
03:52 And then this next part about the leather belt that I got from my boyfriend in New York,
03:55 that was actually true because I did fly up to New York for a weekend trip just to get my haircut,
03:59 go shopping, and buy a gift for my boyfriend.
04:00 But my ass rode Spirit Airlines, so just keep that in mind.
04:04 And then for this about the private chefs, that was a clip of my brother cooking,
04:07 and then the second one is this ratatouille, which I made myself.
04:10 And I knew if I included this shot, people will be like, "Bro, ratatouille."
04:13 And yeah, a lot of people were asking about ratatouille.
04:15 Indeed it is.
04:16 And for all the treatments I show that are high maintenance things that can be low maintenance,
04:20 I truly believe in that concept.
04:21 But obviously, I don't get it this frequently.
04:23 Like I think I said facials I get every week, but no.
04:26 Facials are just once in a while when I want to treat my skin.
04:28 For these facials, I did get a few of them for free in exchange for content,
04:31 but yeah, after I had a membership for like a month,
04:34 I ended the membership because it was too expensive.
04:36 But I do believe in treating yourself once in a while.
04:38 And this scalp treatment, I got a lot of questions about this.
04:40 I don't get them bi-weekly, like that's insane.
04:42 I've gotten this once in my life and it was in Korea for a collab.
04:45 Highly recommend though because I learned a lot about my scalp.
04:47 And last but not least, this dress got a lot of questions as well.
04:50 This is from Gani.
04:50 I love this dress.
04:51 And if you look right down there, there's a fine print that says, "Happy belated April Fools."
04:55 So happy belated April Fools.
04:57 And that just shows anyone can fake it on the internet and people will believe them.
05:00 [BLANK_AUDIO]