23-Year-Old, Who Makes $96K a Year From Her 9 Side Hustles, Says She Is Never Going To Work 9 to 5

A 23-year-old college graduate, Grace Ryu, recently claimed that she makes $96,000 a year from various freelance gigs and she would “never settle for a full-time job.” Talking to SWNS, the Houston-based Gen Zer said that she started working on side hustles after she got her first job and has now turned them into her main sources of income, per the New York Post.

Here’s how she eliminated the need for a full-time job from her life

Ryu majored in recreation, park, and tourism sciences from Texas A&M University. She started working as a student, including ranch hand at a bull farm and restaurant worker. Initially, Ryu thought she too would settle for a 9-to-5 position in tourism and hospitality, so she did more restaurant shifts after graduating in December 2021.

Since Ryu wanted to live in New York, she quit her job and became a live-in nanny for a family in New York in the summer of 2022, the report said. However, Ryu still wanted to try other things out and pursue a career related to her major, so she quit this job as well and returned home in Texas. In 2022, she took up a job in tech sales and eventually got promoted to the position of an account manager in January 2023. However, this wasn’t the only thing that she focused on as she was building up other income streams on the side.

Turning side hustles into full-time work

Along with her sales job, Ryu became a dogwalker and started creating content on social media. “I got very ambitious about all these different things and decided the best time to try them would be while I’m still young,” Ryu shared. She eventually quit her full-time tech job in March 2023 as she couldn’t achieve a “work-life balance.”

She got support from her parents as well and they let her live rent-free in their old house as they had moved to Korea in October 2023.  However, by this time, Ryu had started making money from nine freelance jobs as she worked as an influencer, TikTok partner, user-generated content (UGC) creator, picnic planner, AirBnB arbiter, babysitter, affiliate marketer, dogwalker, and digital product seller.

Ryu said that she now rents her parents’ house seasonally on AirBnB and makes about $8,000 a month. She invests some of her income and saves some as she aspires to become a homeowner by the age of 27.

Ryu’s life as a fulltime freelancer

As Ryu makes $96,000 a year from her nine freelance gigs, she says she will never go back to a full-time job. She says it is very easy to feel burnt out in a full-time job and she had experienced it when she worked in hospitality and tech sales. She says loves the variety while working so many different side hustles and they allow her to fuel her shopping addiction while covering travel expenses.

“I find it much more fun being able to work from wherever I want,” she said in the report. She also reckons that her job flexibility will also help her when she becomes a mom or a business owner.