Friends judging my side business because I’m a high earner

Jealousy knows no bounds. Sorry your alleged friends aren't quite the real friends we all crave.

You dont need anyone else's permission to follow your passion. Go for it!

Hrft maybe friends think you should be volunteering your time to help people instead of making more money, idk, just a thought.

Pole dancing?

Theyre probably a combination of jealous and baffled. As in - why would you do both.

Ignore them and enjoy it. Sometimes the people closest to you can be the least supportive of these side hustles, because they don't want you to waste your efforts for such rubbish rewards. I was in exactly the same boat and people were dissuading me too. They might have been right, and saved me a lot of wasted effort. Or I could have had a different life, we'll never know.

But what I do know is when I lost my high status earning job, I didn't spark up my side hustle ideas!

Honestly people can be very jealous if someone is doing better than them, be pleased for yourself and don’t bother with them. Any genuine friend would wish you well and would be fully behind you.

Duplicate

Duplicate

Nope.

You mean I know a new BMW costs more than a second hand Skoda?

Or that a finance director earns more than a teacher?

Or that private school costs more than state?

Or that getting an extension costs a pretty penny?

Or that taking the kids to Disneyland Florida costs more than a week in Spain?

All blindingly obvious and nothing to do with an ‘unhealthy level of interest in others finances’. Knowing any of the above are extremely simplistic things to know about your friends and extremely obvious to have an accurate estimate of what income bracket they fall into.

Be careful about turning hobby/passion into business. As it can 'take over' and not be a hobby (an enjoyable one) any more. I know a passionate golfer who landed dream job as a golf pro at a club, and resented it in a really short time. To the extent he resigned after a year and threw away his clubs.

Are you asking them to buy anything or support your business with time or whatever? That’s the only way I can see it’s any of their business.

Be authentically yourself.

Not sure of the relevance of the american wellness influencer soundbite to the actual topic under discussion but ok!

Do you complain about how tired and stressed from working you are… then your friends probably think ‘why on earth is she setting up even more work’?

I just had no idea how many niche, outing hobbies there could be until I started reading Mumsnet. I hope someone somewhere is keeping a list. Once the bairns are older I would love to look through and try something more exotic than swimming and winebook club.

I think, as some commenters have put, maybe they’re questioning why you wouldn’t just keep this hobby as a hobby, rather than making money out of it as you’ve said you don’t need the money so why start a small business.
obviously it’s hard to judge without knowing what it is.

money is particularly difficult at the moment - cost of living, higher tax, lots of redundancies so maybe they do feel a bit jealous of you and DH (although don’t want to feel jealous if that makes sense/)

I would ignore them and go ahead with it. But maybe don’t discuss money with them. Good luck,
hope it works!

Do it. My two daughters have cottage businesses and very green fingered. One started cosmetics , the other distills gin

It was sarcasm. Stop taking everything on here literally.

Why can’t you just enjoy the hobby? Why does it have the be a side hustle? Theres a trend of monetising hobbies just for the sake of it but it turns something you do in your down time for fun into more work. Even if you enjoy the hobby, having customers giving you grief, things going wrong etc for money you don’t need seems silly. Just enjoy doing the thing.

god I hope so but this is the sort of comment that could genuinely appear on a post like this....

I think they were being sarcastic

oh shut up.

Sounds like your have far more interest in your friends’ lives than is healthy. I don’t think my examples were extreme. Just typical examples. It’s possible that that OP’s friends are very low income so anything more than 1 holiday a year seems excessive to them, but most average people are sensible enough to realise that outward appearances don’t necessarily equal real wealth.

Yes, I write, and I know it's spectacularly unlikely to make me a profit. I'm planning to self-publish because mainstream publishing is like having a whole second job just to apply.

I'd like other people - however few - to read my books and enjoy them hopefully.

Some people don't get modest ambitions.

Get in another "outing hobby" one

Unless it is making paint brushes with the hairs of a himalayan rat, then the odds are this hobby won't be particularly outing

Why do you care what they think? And why did you assume they want to know about your side hustle?