Katy Hollick spent a year keeping her occupation a secret from her mom, fully aware that the strict woman who raised her would never approve, since an OnlyFans model was not her cup of tea.
To her surprise, when Hollick finally told her, her mother complained only about how much she pays in taxes.
Today, she says that, after quitting the job in the veterinary clinic and living in Tenerife, Spain, she strives to save everything she makes to help her mother in her old age. In three years, she expects to buy a house for her in Spain.
She admitted she was extremely afraid to share that after hearing her mother criticize influencers who get rich online.
“I didn’t tell her for about a year because I was really scared of what her reaction was going to be,” Hollick said.
“I remember once we were at a restaurant, and she was on the phone, saying, ‘Isn’t this ridiculous? These influencers are making 20K a month.’ And I was already making like 10K,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘Yeah, really, really terrible, isn’t it?”
Having grown up with a strict mother, Hollick expected disapproval, but got the complete opposite reaction.
“I sat her down at the table at my house. I was like, ‘Mum, I have to tell you something,'” Hollick explains.
“I was telling her, you know, I have a business and everything and I pay taxes. And she was upset that I had to pay so much in taxes. So that was the one thing she was upset about,” she says.
“Then she was like, ‘I wish this had existed in my day so that I could have done this.’ My mum was really strict, so I was really surprised that she was cool with that.”
This disclosure became the cornerstone of changing their relationship, since Hollick could now freely talk about her life.
“I could be more honest about everything because otherwise I had to basically hide everything in my day-to-day life,” she notes.
Mother and daughter avoid more explicit details about her job.
“She still sees it more as modeling but without your clothes,” Hollick jokes.
But acceptance of her mother is only part of Hollick’s motivation to support her. Growing up, she saw how hard her mother suffered economically since many years of bringing up children did not give her the possibility to build a career.
“Her pension’s going to be very low, which is actually one of the things I was very worried about when I was doing a normal job,” Hollick said. “She didn’t work when I was a kid. She looked after me and my brother and was married to my father, and only my father worked.”
“When they got divorced, she basically lost most of her pension rights. So her pension now is going to be unsustainable for life. It’s basically maybe going to cover the rent, and that’s it,” she said. “I was like, I have to figure out something to make more money and help.”
The constant threat of financial hardship in the family Hollick grew up in drove her to strive for financial independence from early childhood.
“I grew up in a family that was pretty bad with money, I would say,” she explains. “I’ve always had this money insecurity thing since I’ve been a teenager pretty much, like, I need to make money. I need to find money somehow.”
Watching her suffer, Hollick became convinced she needed to be financially independent.
“I’ve always had this worry like I’m never going to have enough, or like, you know, I need to be out there and be independent and be able to take care of myself,” she said.
Therefore, this history makes Hollick’s effort to help her even more emotional and necessary.
“I’ve always had this hunger to find money for sure,” she said. “And now being able to give back to my mum after she’s been through financial hardships means a lot.”
Instead of spending her earnings on designer bags and other luxuries, Hollick aims to save enough to provide her mother with a comfortable retirement.
“My whole goal was that when she is on pension, I can just help fund her life without any troubles. That’s the goal I’m working towards,” she said. “Right now I don’t splurge on anything. I just save, save so that in a couple of years I can help out with all of that and help buy her maybe a property or a house.”
In addition, Hollick is paying for various experiences that are unaffordable to her mother right now. Last year, they traveled to South Africa, with Hollick buying more expensive lodging and more comfortable transportation, instead of using the cheapest cars available.
“My mum would always rent the cheapest, smallest, tiniest car to go driving around in South Africa. But there’s massive potholes everywhere, there’s sand roads,” Hollick said. “One thing we can do is, because we have this money, just get the best 4×4 out there and upgrade that kind of stuff and stay in safer places maybe than my mum would book.”
Also, Hollick frequently pays for flights and various purchases for her mother when they meet.
“My mum’s always like, ‘No, but it’s not because you earn more that you have to pay for it.’ But I do anyway because I just feel like I should,” Hollick says.
A flexible working schedule helps her spend more time with her mother despite the different countries they live in.
“I almost see her more now that I live in a different country than I did before when I lived in the same country and had to work a nine-to-five,” she noted.
At the same time, the need to live close to her mother is also determined by a tragic family story when Hollick was a teen. Her grandmother got Alzheimer’s disease in South Africa while her mother, who was already far away, was busy working and unable to look after her mother at the time of her death.
This case convinced Hollick to build a life that wouldn’t force her to choose between work and family.
“That also really made me feel like I need to have the financial security and freedom to be able to take care of my mum if something happens,” she said. “So that I’m not stuck working a job if something happens to my mum and my job is like, ‘No, you can’t go.'”
Now Hollick tries to move closer to her mother and plans to buy a property in Tenerife in three years.
“That’s definitely the plan, that she’ll live somewhere close to me. I want my mum to be able to retire in a nice warm country like Spain,” she said. “She does come from South Africa, and I think she really misses the warmth and the sun. I don’t know if she wants to retire in Belgium, so I can make that happen for her.”
Her mother keeps the news of Hollick’s occupation from the rest of her relatives for fear of criticism. Their connection is only getting stronger now, though; Hollick says she never expected their relationship to change so dramatically after her career confession.
“We became much more close after I told her about OnlyF*ns. I was very scared of her judgment before,” she said. “But we’ve changed a lot and grown together.”
