A model who was left homeless after her grandparents “disowned” her is now earning $1.3m per year.
Growing up, Kassidie Kosa knew that all she wanted was to be rich and famous – and it didn’t matter how she got there.
At the age of two, she went into the full-time care of her grandparents, who brought her up as a devout Christian.
As a teenager, Kassidie started to rebel from the religion and was eventually kicked out of their home.
Left homeless with no plan, the now-24-year-old crashed on a friend’s couch and even lived on a back garden patio for a short time, while trying to figure out a way to turn her life around.
A silly joke became her lightbulb moment.
“I was with my boyfriend and his friends, when one of them started talking about women making a fortune doing live webcams,” said Kassidie, who is now 24 years old and boasts 2.8m followers on Instagram.
“My boyfriend joked that I should give it a go, but I laughed it off.
“I didn’t believe it was actually a real thing, but it sparked a curiosity in me.
“When I got home, I looked it up and was gobsmacked to learn just how much money women can make from this.
“It was like the perfect job had landed in my lap.
“I signed up to become a cam girl immediately and the rest is history.
“Now, I can truly have whatever I want, whenever I want – it’s insane.”
Kassidie, who hails from Texas, US, has seen incredible success in her saucy career and claims to have made over $4 million so far.
She describes her upbringing as a “typical middle-class American” lifestyle.
As a teen, she got good grades and was even awarded a scholarship to study at a Christian school.
But she found herself disagreeing with many of the values that the religion preached, such as not having sex before marriage and behaving modestly.
Kassidie said: “There were so many rules and the punishment never fit the crime.
“Once, I wore ‘too much’ mascara and was banned from wearing makeup for a whole year.
“Another time, I was told sex before marriage was wrong, so I didn’t sleep with men but was fooling around with my female friends.
“But apparently, I ‘hadn’t actually lost my virginity’ because this was just ‘experimenting’, which made me feel rejected and ignored.
“My grandma grounded me from [using] my phone and seeing friends for a year.
“I hoped I’d just be able to share a part of myself with her, but it was quickly swept under the rug.
“Growing up for me was about fitting into what all of the Christian adults around me expected – being gay was a sin.
“I felt like a part of me was always wrong and I had to do my best to fit into what everyone wanted of me, like marrying a man of the church and definitely never being bisexual.
“I started doubting my values, because what I was being told didn’t make any sense.
“When I eventually met my boyfriend, everything changed.
“He was a few years older than me, which my grandparents didn’t like, and from there, things only went downhill.
“Once, when I got caught fooling around with him, they said I would be grounded without any electronics for a year and he would have to move back to his home state.
“So the only way we could communicate would be by letter.
“After they disowned me, I slept on a friend’s floor for six months and then found an uninsulated back patio online.
“It was terrible, but I only stayed there for a year and then I started making a living for myself.
“Looking back now, I don’t think they were entirely in the wrong, but their core beliefs didn’t pair up with my own.
“I wanted independence.”
Within her first week as a cam girl, Kassidie made over $600 – a year later, she’d made $300,000.
Now, she earns an average of $1.3 million per year, with $200,000 in her highest month alone.
However, it’s not come without its challenges.
Talking about her first live cam experience, she said: “I had never gone live before, let alone been completely naked on camera.
“Once I tried the whole nude thing, though, the money just came rolling in.
“My boyfriend was quite uncomfortable with it all at first but eventually grew to support me.
“His friends would act quite weird around me, as they had seen my content.
“A roommate of ours wouldn’t even look me in the eye.
“Despite the awkwardness, I found it all quite funny – I wasn’t going to let it get in the way of me making money.”
Kassidie has had her fair share of bizarre requests during her career, such as being asked to bathe in BBQ baked beans.
Another time, she was asked to lay on top of carrots and leafy greens with an apple in her mouth, emulating a roast pig.
But the model always says no to extreme suggestions of this kind, especially as she makes quite enough cash doing what she already does.
Kassidie claims her grandparents have tried to reach out in recent years, even asking her to move home, but she is happy with her new life.
In 2020, she tied the knot with her then-boyfriend, now husband, Stan, 27.
She’s also bought her own four-bed house, for $650,000 (USD) (£514,000) with a theatre room and pool – and says she’s finally got the stability she was searching for as a teenager.
Kassidie added: “I’m very lucky and I feel so blessed all the time.
“This job has given me the freedom I longed for as a teenager.
“The situation with my grandparents still isn’t great – we speak on and off – but whenever we do talk, they only ask when I’ll be quitting and if I’m actually happy.
“So I don’t chat to them very much.
“They know how successful I am, yet they’re still full of disapproval and judgement.
“My husband, though, has given me unmatched support and has healed the inner child in me, who was crying out for love.
“Some people say life is God’s plan.
“You either look at everything as pre-determined or decide that life is all about free will – I believe it’s somewhere in-between.
“No matter what, though, I’m happy and I’ve achieved my dreams.
“It’s not come without its heartbreak and sacrifices but getting rich and famous was never going to be easy.”
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