To wonder how they afford to stay at home?

[Zonnet]

I follow lots of mum accounts on Tiktok. They are mainly younger mums ranging from 20-30. Most (not all) stay at home or only work extremely part time, have two or three kids, seem to have a lovely home & two brand new cars on the drive and are constantly filming packing for holiday and day out videos.

It’s nothing against them at all, it’s nice that they can have the freedom to do those things and have such lifestyles. AIBU to wonder how they manage it on one income at a younger age? It’s one thing if you ‘have it all’ in your mid 30s or 40s as you have probably worked very hard to establish yourself or your other half could be a very big earner. Maybe it’s just not reflective of real life… or I don’t know!

@Zonnet

Don't underestimate the amount of £££ people make from 'the internet.' I know a youtuber - I won't say what they do or the exact amount of subscribers they have, as it is a bit identifying. But they do have between 40K and 65K subscribers, and they make a MINIMUM of £1000 a month from youtube. They also make around £700 to £1000 a month from instagram. (Minimum.)

They work 2 days a week - 18 hours in a 'normal' job, and have these other social media jobs. Some months they make more (than £1000) via instagram and youtube. Sometimes twice as much. Sometimes THREE times as much. Sometimes more. Depending on the amount of views for any given 'video' (or post) that they have made.

They also get paid to do promotions and ads on their internet pages and make multiple 1000s of £££ more per year from this. They also do some occasional modelling. They live with their spouse who has a full time normal job that pays OK. Around £55K. Gets much more sometimes, through bonuses.

They have a big 5 bed, 2 bathroom home - with an acre of land, and 3 of the bedrooms have ensuites. The house has 3 reception rooms, a 20 X 23 ft kitchen, and a cellar. They have a car each. 20 reg and 21 reg. 6 car drive, and a triple garage. Outsiders wonder how they do it, indeed a few people have asked me ... Loads of money can be made via the internet if you put your mind to it!

This person I know is not an 'influencer,' but I I do think the snobbery around influencers needs to stop. These people are making fucking shitloads, and are laughing at people mocking and deriding them.

Same with people who did media degrees. Got mocked by many for their so-called mickey mouse degree. But I know 5 young people (25 to 30 years old,) who are earning 6 figures in TV and film right now, who are laughing at the people who derided them. They had the last laugh for sure!

A lot of them are under 18 too!

But that isn’t actually that much is it. I mean every penny counts but making £1,000-£2,000 a month isn’t great riches.

The influencer I know makes lots of content that is misleading. So if she spots a nice car in the street she’ll take a clip making it look like it’s hers, she goes for brief visits to posh restaurants etc and literally takes visits of herself walking in through the doorway before turning around again and coming out and she uses the homes of friends and family to take little clips as well as going for viewings at big houses for sale and photographing nice features. She even used some of her sisters holiday pics.

Everything is also heavily filtered and in RL she is much larger than she appears in her photos.

I think a lot of it is unrealistic, much like the majority of social media, it can be very easy to portray an image of perfection by highlighting the best parts of everything. It's important not to compare yourself to people's lives on social media as it's often not reality.

My dd's friend is a content creator on YouTube and TikTok and has got 1000s of followers.

He makes about £100k a year, paid to travel the world and given equipment to do it (like pcs).

He makes what I call teenage drivel, you know taping salad to your face.

I never watch any of this internet crap and find the concept of ‘influencers’ ridiculous and quite disturbing. Who needs these shallow people to tell them
how to live their lives? Some I have seen on tv.. yes, looking at you, ridiculous woman with your children in white outfits covering themselves in paint so you can wash it off… If we don’t look at the internet shit life may be better.

Loads of parents at my kids school look as if they dont work but in actual fact work in the pms/ weekends etc due to the COL some are doing 2 jobs just like me

I think a lot of it depends on where they live. I live in a small town in Scotland. Average house probably 165k for 3 beds. Commutable to a large city with decent wages. If you bought a 165k 'forever' home that had a fixed term during the interest hike, and you bought it when you were 22/23 (which isn't uncommon where I live). Well by time you have kids, say 28 or 30, you'll have paid off a decent chunk of it and with this low cost housing, you can afford the nice car, a couple of kids on part time hours, occasional holidays etc. This area is a place families live close, so you likely have free childcare I see it a lot in my area, especially in couples. Whole different ball game in London though. I think the key is to get on property ladder young, which is impossible for most of the country.

However you sacrifice other things, it's not the nicest place to live.

If one partner earns a decent salary and they have had inheritance or significant help from family to buy their house maybe with little or no mortgage this makes a huge difference.

On the other hand there are lots living well beyond their means with huge debts, mortgaged up to their maximum, flash cars on finance, holidays on credit cards and one day it will all come crashing down.

I'm a bit sceptical that all these fairly low level influencers 40-100k followers are actually making much money

Goldman Sachs reckon only about 4pc of influencers make more than USD100k a year (£78k) which would be needed for a fairly long period in order to save deposit and pay mortgage on a house in most parts of the South plus the other lifestyle trappings of wealth.
https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/the-creator-economy-could-approach-half-a-trillion-dollars-by-2027.html

Also I happen to have read the judgement on Lauren Goodger's child support claim against Kyle Walker and she earns very little from her influencing. Gets various things given to her free (meals out etc) but actually ran up huge debts trying to live well beyond her means to try and look successful and rich (which the judge criticised her for and said there was no requirement for Kyle pay off debts given she ran them up on clothes and holidays)

So in short, don't believe the hype.

Family money, wealthy spouse, massive debts - one or more of those usually explains it

We live in an ugly massive house in a meh linear village in a boring county. I could conflate that as much as i wanted for SM:
-loads of space in the house and fill it with cheaper/upcycled furniture
-Views over fields onto farms giving an illusion of self-sufficiency/rural living.

• found every exciting place across the whole county and acted like our local area was far wealthier than it was and just hope no-one local called us out on geographical anomalies

After I had my inheritance I could have started being an influencer as wasn't working for a bit as well (Covid and small children). Instead we upgraded our house, paid off a chunk of mortgage and bought myself a newer 2nd hand car, tucked some away for my Masters studies. Life, money and circumstance are what you make of them, these influencers are just doing that. It's mostly an illusion as social media is entertainment and nothing else.

I read a (fiction) book about perfect mum influencers a few years ago called Everything’s perfect by Nicole Kennedy - @Zonnet you might like it. (Disclaimer, I reckon it needed an Editor to trim it a bit, we read it for our book club so I slogged through what I’d have abandoned otherwise but enjoyed the ending). Just thought of it when someone was saying they might be living with parents, in the book her MIL has a big house and if I remember rightly she films quite a bit in herMILs kitchen, not her own.

@Zonnet I think that you following them all increases their wealth. They are obviously creating content that isn't necessarily the truth. Obviously they won't post themselves looking rubbish, kids having a strop, empty cupboard until payday etc. I have read about influencers who are short of cash but get free days out or clothes if they post photos.

I think they need to bring in a law about using babies & children to get likes. Everyone loves Stacey Solomon but I feel sorry for her kids.

@1990thatsme what is passive income?!

I reckon your right but not sure they get very little. I think even your average tiktoker is earning a reasonable amount. Maybe not worth the effort to most of us, but enough to get by.
A colleague in my previous job gave up her job because her daughter was earning 4k a month on tiktok alone.
She said to me, she was shocked. And told me quite a lot about it. Then 3 months later she left. I've seen her daughter on tiktok so I know that bit is true, she had then about 40k followers?are they called followers on tiktok? And that was 2 years ago. By now she will be bigger and earning more.
I do think that they film a lot of the day then edit. So working more than your average hours. And thinking up content is probably challenging.
There was one guy who did up a tiny home in Yorkshire somewhere. He did a video on how much his most watched video made him. Over a million views, 38k iirc. And that's now passive income as people come across it and watch it. It still earns him money.

My thoughts on this:
Influencer is a job. It's staging a lifestyle with X product(s). The aim is for you to think that:
Mums are stay at home or only work extremely part time, have two or three kids, seem to have a lovely home & two brand new cars on the drive and are constantly filming packing for holiday and day out videos

Think Supermarket Christmas Food Adverts... big turkey, massive pile of roast vegetables, lots of desserts, pointless presents shiny plastic ornaments and 20 jolly relatives squeezed around a far to small table.

You don't buy that, why do you buy the influences narrative of a happy family?

@converseandjeans It means income that doesn’t come from employment, so in my case I have income from trust funds, share dividends and other investments which I inherited or own as a family member.

I am titled if that makes it clearer, although I don’t bandy that about in real life, so I can understand people would be curious how my family lifestyle comes from one income.

Social media may be their job. It can be quite lucrative if you put the effort in, but it is like a job and not quite as easy as sharing what you want as and when.

@1990thatsme

Lucky you! Hopefully you can pass onto your children. There's no chance of me suddenly being able to make a passive income then which is a shame as it sounds like a nice way to earn.

That will be some of it with the products yes. It's a form of advertising, and they're like the models and actors who'd have been advertising the days out on telly and in magazines 30 years ago. It's a job, they're working.

Not saying it applies to all SAHMs but seen a lot of these young women appearing randomly on facebook lately. Typically they have tiktok videos about their life. People commenting on the stories seem to have overlooked the fact that they obviously belong to US religious sects that expect them to be subservient. There was one woman aged 22/23 who didn't work, apparently liked to wear her husband's favourite (on her!) outfits (that looked like they belonged to the Duggar family) and did the laundry in the bath. And people were saying how lovely this is, how nice to see a traditional wife etc 😫 I don't think there is anything nice or desirable about it. If a couple are equals and have one at home as a genuine choice then that is not a problem. I guess it is possible to have money at a young age.

@Era

If you could be bothered to read my post properly, I said £2000 a month MINIMUM from instagram and youtube combined. Sometimes 2-3 times more - depending on how many views their posts and 'videos' get, and sometimes even more than that. ALSO, lots of money from promotions and advertising and modelling. Can be 10 to 15 grand a month SOME months. Sometimes more.

Yeah it's not millions, but don't tell me THAT is not a decent amount, along with their normal job and their partners wage too of £55K to £70K a year.

They also get 1000s of £££ worth of freebies from various companies too, which adds to their income!

Try reading peoples posts properly in future, before responding.

Social media is their job. They make money from it. It also does not reflect their reality. When they’re making videos, they’re working and a lot of thought, planning and editing has gone into it. They can stage packing for a holiday and actually be going nowhere.

@converseandjeans - not all those with passive incomes are posh, I knew a girl at uni whos parents were divorced and then her father had died, as she was his only dependent she had a pension from his employer and she’d inherited his flat, which was long term rented out to give her another income.

I know other people who due to family falling out have been in the situation a grandparent had decided to “skip a generation” so they have ended up inheriting a house or other investments at a relatively young age.

sadly many people I know who seem more “set up” at a young age got there via an inheritance and family tragedy.

God it really pisses me off when people dare to comment on or question an unrealistic set up and then get accused of "jealousy".

Like being back in the playground.

Grow up.

It's probably cheaper to stay home than to pay for childcare. I know lots of people in their 20s - early 30s who earn less than full time childcare would cost for 1 child, let alone multiple children.