In this day and age, I think it’s more common than ever for young people to want to start their own business, work from home, set their own scheduled, etc.
Probably because most big companies don’t pay enough or offer enough incentives, but that’s a whole other conversation.
OP is a successful woman, and so when her stepdaughter started thinking about starting a business, she asked her for help.
Hello I am married woman for 6 years and I have a step daughter she is 25 now and she graduated college too.
She used to live in another state with her grandparents because of her college so we didn’t spend so much time together other than so eventual family gatherings and the times she came to sleepover.
Now she always had dream of running cosmetics company/brand type of thing and she wanted to start her line of makeup stuff like lip glosses , lip scrubs and all of that now through social media.
When my husband told me this I was like great she should go for it. The problem is she has absolutely no resources to start this and I mean money.
She never had a proper job so she doesn’t have her own income.
I make more money than her father okay and he can’t give her the proper fundings since she needs a lot and at the same time it will be a financial toll on him so he asked me to fund her.
OP is considering it but wants some guarantee (in writing) that she will get her investment (or more) returned to her in a timely manner.
I did my research on what she might need like the material she would need and shipping company payment and discovered she might need at least need 10K pounds (2K in us dollars and I prefer not to disclose my country).
She even contacted me for help and I told them I can pay this amount if I either get right to a percentage of her brand if I become long term investor to her brand.
Or if she just wants my help for short term she can sign a contract that states she’ll have to pay me back.
Her stepdaughter and her family think OP is being ridiculous.
They both disagreed and my husband started attacking me for treating carla (step daughter) like a business partner I told him that’s literally business we are getting to and told him that later suggestion is actually generous of me. I’ll let her have all the rights to her brand just pay me back.
Carla told me she will pay me back but doesn’t want to sign any contract and I told her that her tantrum when she discovered she is not getting free fundings is the reason I’d need to have a contract.
We had this lengthy conversation and they ended up not agreeing on my terms so she didn’t go further with her brand.
They even tried to say she is playing favorites.
My husband is still mad at me then my MIL called me to say I am cold-hearted for not helping carla and that I involve business in everything.
I just don’t understand why are they making Carla’s lack of financial independence my problem when they can have her work and gain money then try to move forward with her dreams instead of asking me to fund her dreams for free.
Now they are shifting this as if I don’t consider Carla family because I help my bio daughter business through my company and while that’s true my bio daughter and I have an agreement of giving me 10% of the profit so I don’t fund her for free either.
I bet Reddit has an opinion on just who is being thick-skulled here…
The top comment says with her lack of experience, her stepdaughter is not a good investment.
OP is not wrong to want to protect her investment.
The rest of the family are the ones being ridiculous, for sure.
OP is really doing the stepdaughter a favor, treating her like a professional.
It is a kind way to figure out how you need to prepare for such a thing.
This stepdaughter wants a gift, not an investment.
So I guess they’ll have to agree to disagree.
If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.