I know people like that. Typically they make passive income from their assets (stocks and real estate). But they don't want to admit it, so they make up fake jobs like "day trading and selling online products".
In Western culture, and probably others, your job is closely tied to your identity. Even if you don't feel so yourself, it greatly affects how others perceive you. After all, when you meet a new person, one of the first things you ask them is, "What do you do [for a living]?" If you're living off passive income, answering that question can be complicated. So you just make up something like "being a consultant" or "doing online sales."
It's pretty similar with generational wealth. I know someone who has been working doing script reviews in Hollywood for 10 years now. It's definitely paid work, but maybe a few thousand a month; the rest of their lifestyle is financed by their parents, who run a real estate business. But it's a lot easier, socially, to say "I'm a script writer and reviewer" than to say "I don't work, my parents pay for everything."
If you actually sat down and did the math, it'd be obvious. But most people don't think that hard about it, and will accept an answer of "I'm a script writer" in the context of e.g. telling a Tinder date what you do for a living.
I grew up poor, most of my friends are not college educated and they come from dirt poor areas and have never had a decent job. Yet they fall into this category as well. It’s really easy to make money hustling in the day to day. For instance one friend builds picnic tables, scraps metal and does the occasional moving/painting job.
The key difference is that if you offered any of those people a $100k/year office job they would take it in a heartbeat. The kind of people we're talking about can support their upper-middle class lifestyles without a fulltime job because of passive income or generational wealth.
Not in my part of the US. I've rarely been asked, and have never asked unless it was pertinent to an ongoing discussion.
They don't even have to be directly taking out loans to do it themselves, only taking advantage of economic conditions created by cheap money.
"Stocks" haven't been a great source of passive income this year, and "real estate" is showing signs of having just passed its peak. These easy jobs may not survive these things contracting.
Of course, if they're walking off with cash rather than debt, they may still be among the winners of the whole 0% interest regime.
It takes time and dedication, but I didn't work myself into the ground doing it. But I did have part time jobs when I was starting out.
I think its something you create for yourself that grows over time, when you work at a job, you are enriching someone else's vision. That's ok if your visions are aligned, but if you are working at a job that doesn't align with your value system, there is only so much of that you can take.
I'm talking more about the Amazon drop-shipping businesses where "you can earn $5K/week!!1!" where if it's really that easy the market should already have been consumed, or even the ones you just plain can't figure out where the money is coming from. There's a lot of "businesses" that work in a 0% interest environment that won't work in a 5+% environment. If you've been doing it since 2004, you are almost certainly not in such a space because you started in a non-0% interest environment.
I mean, basically, it's just like how the crypto business space is completely collapsing now. They are the first big things to topple over in a non-0%-environment. Smaller analogs to that can happen too, it just won't make the news that Joe-down-the-street's business of importing bulk cheap IP-pirated stuff from China and distributing it to local parents who want cheap Disney-branded stuff went out of business because it turns out that even though he didn't take loans himself, every other company involved in his business was offering subsidized, not-truly-sustainable prices because of the cheap money environment. (If you don't know, that's a real thing, not an outrageous fake example I'm making up. I have a particular acquaintance in mind who did that as a side hustle for a while.)
In my experience, the "experiences" that single, underemployed people of working age (20s to 40s) have are largely watching shitloads of Netflix and YouTube.
After all, even if they aren't working a fulltime job, most of their friends are. And even if they find friends who are also underemployed, finances will be tight for both of them, so what exactly can they do together? Usually just hang out at each others' places and watch Netflix and YouTube.
Admittedly this could look a lot different for those with kids, though.
My kids graduated and I moved to SW CO. I have a lot of friends in their early 20s and look at them with the perspective of someone with children that age.
I know a whole lot of ski bums, dirt bag climbers, rafting guides, semi-pro slack liners or whatever. Sound healers and yogis.
To be clear, I'm sure there are plenty of folks watching shitloads of video, but I don't know them because of selection bias. And I know that some of them are trustifarians and others are sociopathic scammers.
Personally, I like my remote coding job. I'm also underemployed but the job is easy and has gentle requirements on me. So I'm a bit removed from what these folks are doing.
However, the folks I know are generally having a much better time than just sitting around watching netflix, and the comment about having experiences taken from us by having full time jobs is a real thing from my position:
being able to just go on a 3 month climbing spree sounds really fun and I know folks doing that, I just don't want to have to re-acquire a job in the aftermath.
Much less so for the underemployed 30 year old making $5k/month off passive income, or a mom&dad stipend, who still has to occasionally look at their bank account.
Pretty common for people in these situations to fall into depression and/or alcoholism.