Most of us have been told from a young age that hard work and perseverance are the keys to success. You can’t expect to make money overnight, but if you’re patient and resilient, you’ll get there one day! At this point, however, you’ve probably realized that life isn’t fair. And working a grueling job for extremely long hours doesn’t always pay off. On the other hand, for some lucky individuals, making money takes very little effort!
Redditors have recently been recalling the easiest money they’ve ever made, so we’ve gathered their most amusing stories below. From getting lucky at a casino to making smart investments, enjoy scrolling through these painless ways people earned cash. Keep reading to also find a conversation with Tom Allingham, personal finance expert at Save the Student, and be sure to upvote the paths to paydays that you’d like to experience too!
#1
Not me, but my son. When he was 10, my elderly neighbor lost her cat. He was gone for days and she was devastated. My son was at the bus stop a block away , I’m with him but I’m chatting with other parents and not paying attention. Suddenly, he takes off running between the yards and I’m like – WTF, so I take off after him. He runs down like a hundred yards and there is the missing cat. The cat seemed scared, but recognized us and let him pick her up. We walk up the street (bus is gone) and knock on our neighbors door and of course she breaks down in tears and offers him a reward, which he refuses. She knocks on our door later to thank him and again offers the reward, which he again refuses. Fast forward a few years when she passes away, we get a knock on the door from her son who tells us his mother’s will included a provision that $25,000 be placed in a 529 account for my son’s education.
Image credits: daveinmd13
#2
I used to freelance software development.
I had a regular client who had a project that I was contributing to here and there.
He’s in the US I’m in Ireland.
One night, at 3am, I woke up to go to the toilet and saw an email on my phone with “urgent” in the subject line.
I read it and he said “man if you can fix this one last bug the project is complete… I’ll send you whatever is left in the project budget if you can fix this in the next 2 hours”.
I grabbed my laptop on my bedside table…. saw the bug … fixed a simple variable name. Closed my laptop and went to bed. All in all it took 40 seconds.
When I woke up there was £5500 in my Stripe account.
£5500 for less than 1 minutes work is pretty good going! I wish they were all like that. ??.
Image credits: Tinpotray
#3
My friend dragged me to the Casino with him and convinced me to play a slot machine. I walked around for a bit and found a cool looking monopoly slot machine (1$ machine).
First spin I hit the bonus wheel which ended up paying out about $3000. Cashed out and didnt play anymore ?.
Image credits: poontato
To learn more about making easy money, we reached out to Tom Allingham, personal finance expert at Save the Student, who was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda. First, we wanted to know if Tom had ever earned money in a surprisingly simple way.
“I think probably the easiest and best way I’ve ever made money (and still do!) is through referral codes,” he shared. “I don’t know exactly how much I’ve made over time, but it’s definitely into the thousands of pounds. This is mostly thanks to the higher value ones, especially an old energy supplier I was with who used to offer £50 per person you successfully referred to the company, and occasionally boosted that to £100.”
“But I’ve used loads of others too, including banks,” Tom continued. “Basically, the message is: check all the products and services you use to see if they have a referral scheme. If they do – and, crucially, if you would honestly recommend them – then encourage all your friends and family to sign up via your link.”
#4
$50k retention bonus at work when I had no intention of leaving.
I started not carrying about work, so I would take half days off randomly to do stuff I enjoyed.
My boss thought I was interviewing for other companies so fought to get me the retention bonus. Free money. I’ll take it.
Image credits: New2ThisThrowaway
#5
As a kid, a sweet older couple in my neighborhood always asked me to water their plants while the were away, and the would alway, without fail, overpay me to an extreme. My mom would always try to give the money back, but they were having NONE of it. If only money were that easy to make now.
Image credits: ItsKay180
#6
For three quarters at school I got paid full T/A salary for watering plants in a greenhouse and watering and feeding animals in the animal room on the weekends. Less than an hour a day.
Image credits: LifeHappenzEvryMomnt
As for why earning money is usually so difficult, Tom says, “Unfortunately, for the most part, nobody’s going to give you money for nothing. So usually you’ll have to get creative or simply work if you want to make some money.”
“That said, we do have a list of ways to get free money that require little or no effort from you whatsoever,” he added. “Referral codes are one of them, but there are other things like signup offers and even making money from walking.”
#7
Goodwill flip. Found a worn copy of *A Christmas Carol* and figured it was cool. Ended up being a 1st American Edition, 1st Printing. Sent it to one of the big 3 auction houses which authenticated it. 50¢ buy turned into $9800 after fees and taxes.
#8
Used to do electronics design consulting on the side. Got a call from a company I had done business with: can you make a device which makes a precise (IIRC) 2800 hz tone and which fits inside a walkie talkie? I said “I don’t know – can you send me the walkie talkie and the technical manual?”
They send me the stuff and I studied the schematic. Very quickly I realized one of the internal oscillators was something like 16,384 times 2800 Hz. I could do this for less than $2. So I call them back and I say “Sure I can do it, but I can’t make any money off this because it is so cheap.” And they say “We’ll pay you $50 per unit – this is the remaining piece of a multi-million dollar tender.”
I sold hundreds of these things. I even farmed out the manufacturing. I paid for my first house with them.
Image credits: mingy
#9
I used to be friends with a guy who, although he had a corporate day job, moonlighted as a private investigator. Most of his clients were married people who suspected their spouses of cheating, so they would hire him to try to catch them in the act.
In order to be discreet and not arouse suspicion, he’d hire a female friend – sometimes me, sometimes my sister or another woman – to pose as his date. I’d put on a nice dress and heels and get gussied up, and he’d pick me up. I’m not sure how he located his targets – I’m not a P.I. myself so I don’t know the ins and outs of the job, and I didn’t concern myself with it – but if they were at a restaurant, he’d take me there for a nice dinner.
After dinner, almost invariably, the targets would end up at the only motel in the area that charged by the hour. He’d book the room next to theirs for a few hours, so it looked as if we, like most people who visited that particular motel, were getting it on.
In reality, of course, he was actually spying on them. So I’d sit on the bed and watch TV for a couple of hours while he set up a bunch of surveillance equipment, tape recorders, etc. and listened in on the illicit lovers next door.
Then he’d drive me home, hand me $200 in cash, and that was it. So – $200 and a free meal at a nice restaurant for roughly 3 hours of pretending I was a nice, non-creepy guy’s paramour. Unquestionably the most unusual source of extra income I’ve ever personally had, but also the easiest money I’ve ever made in my life.
EDIT: Having had a couple of comments seem to suggest that what I did was morally wrong because it violates people’s privacy, and even compare me to a prostitute (or suggest that I was one), let me address this: you know what’s morally wrong? Cheating on your spouse. If you don’t cheat, you and your illicit lover won’t be tailed by a P.I. and have your “privacy” invaded. If you’re not happy in your marriage, or you want to be with someone else, get a divorce. (I’m not talking about abusive or controlling marriages here, either; someone being abused and controlled is almost certainly not going to even have the option to cheat.) Private investigation is a legitimate business. It’s not illegal. And I was not a prostitute. I was acting. There was literally no physical contact between me and the P.I. aside from me taking his arm in public to keep up appearances. No sex, no kissing, no canoodling, no hugging. Zip, zilch, nada sexual or romantic contact whatsoever. The next person to suggest such a thing is getting reported for BNBR. Thanks.
We also asked the financial expert if there are any reliable and sustainable ways to earn money that don’t require a ton of effort.
“There are loads of easy ways to make money, and again, we’ve listed dozens of them on our website. Some of them will earn you a relatively modest amount, like paid survey sites. But others could earn you hundreds of pounds a year, if not per month, like renting out your parking space,” Tom shared.
“If you live near a major transport hub, sports ground, or anywhere else where parking is at a premium, people will pay good money to rent out your parking spot for a few hours or days,” he noted. “It requires next to no effort from you, and it’s an absolute no-brainer if your driveway is currently sat empty!”
#10
Box of new Braun electric shaver replacement heads at the thrift store. 77 of them new in individual packages marked $4.99 each. They go for $15-20 on eBay and would be easy to sell as a lot so I grabbed the box.
“How much if I buy all of them?”
Them: “Umm, well there’s a lot of them in there, how about $40?”
“Uhh, sure”
They sold for $1,000USD within a week (~$12 each).
Image credits: gfanonn
#11
$500 to use my Jeep in a Selsun Blue commercial. I sat in an air conditioned trailer for 2 hours.
Image credits: afm00dy
#12
I made $100k selling d***s.
I thought up a play on the old “eat a bag of d***s” insult, and made a website to anonymously send people a bag of gummy d***s with the message “eat a bag of d***s”. Simple.
After getting the website live over a few drinks, I shared it with some friends, posted some pics on Imgur saying “look what I got in the mail!” With a link and boom… Within 3 days there was $100k in orders and offers to buy the company (I sold it).
Spent about $100 for the domain and a dozen bags of gummies, then went to a distributor for wholesale when things took off.
Image credits: Twice_Knightley
#13
Boss set some ridiculous pricing as a dare for anyone willing to send us overtime work over Christmas.
Well someone actually did and wanted to hire a full shift. I volunteered to sign on (remote work) and do the overtime.
We charged them for the full 8 hour shift. They only sent in 5 minutes worth of work.
$1,000 / hour. I got 8 grand working online for 5 minutes in my PJs while watching Christmas movies.
#14
Voiceover work. Once made $4500 for 2 hrs of reading/recording.
Image credits: metrorhymes
#15
Furniture flipping in an affluent area. Partnered with a junk remover. He’d get paid to take stuff to the dump… wealthy folks would throw out of like-new designer furniture simply because they were redecorating. Free for me, sold it online at big discounts.
#16
Signed up for a casino card and they gave me $10 voucher which I put into a machine that gave me $1500.
Image credits: rembut
#17
Temp work at a chemical company. They made all sorts of cleaning products. Clock in, then all of us drones had to grab an order form off the stack and get to work filling cans and buckets. 100 (1) gallon buckets of eyesting solvent, 250 (5) gallon buckets of lungschorcher fluid, whatever. I soon discovered the golden ticket: their bubble bath gel. It shipped in 55 gallon drums, was thick, and warm, and smelled like candy. Best of all, it was slowwww. I’d set up the empty barrels on pallets, insert the nozzle, and wait….30 minutes or so per barrel. We weren’t allowed to leave a nozzle while a container was being filled. Kind of boring, but in a pleasant smelling, easy money kind of way. I made sure to get to work first so that I could flip through the orders and get the good stuff.
Image credits: Igotthesilver
#18
Modeling in a secondary market (aka not NYC or LA). $2000 a day to be pampered, fed and told you’re pretty.
Image credits: LilyLuxee_
#19
I wrote a throwaway script in half an hour for a coworker that singlehandedly got me a $20,000 bonus.
Image credits: POGtastic
#20
My parents lived on a 17 acre tract in North Raleigh. It was on the county tax rolls valued at $500,000. They had paid just $250,000 for it 10 years earlier and my dad was convinced it was overvalued. He had appealed the value but lost.
He called me one day to say that he was going to sell out, “some fool” had offered him the same price as the tax value. I asked what the property had appraised for, and he said he didn’t have it appraised, anyone knew it was not worth the offer price.
I offered that I would pay for an appraisal just to satisfy my curiosity. If the appraisal is higher, we can split the difference 50/50. We got the appraisal and it was double the offer. My dad said there’s no way it would sell for that.
I said humor me, it costs nothing to find out, we just put a For Sale sign in the front yard.
I said let the process run out, it sold for more than the appraisal and I made $250,000.
Image credits: Oldpotter2
#21
I started a blog about 15 years ago about a topic that was interesting to me. It didn’t get much traffic for about 4-5 years… then it took off.
I estimate it’s made a total of about $2,000,000 in pre-tax profit since around 2015.
My best year was $470,000.
But here’s the thing… a lot of the time it was mostly passive income. Don’t get me wrong, I worked on it a lot but I’d also go 3-6 months without touching it and it would still bring in $20k+/month.
Unfortunately, traffic tanked about a year ago so the gravy train is probably over.
#22
In the early 2000’s, it was being an expert at Adobe software. People would pay me to do portions of their project because they never bothered to learn how to use Illustrator and do it themselves. Easy money. Charged hundreds to “vectorize” raster logos which took a few clicks and maybe 30 seconds for me to do.
Image credits: permafacepalm
#23
This one is very “username checks out” but the question warrants it:
I used to strip and do stuff on a camera site. I am a dude. I was in my early twenties and I did it for a couple of weeks. In those couple of weeks I made more money than I do now 10 years later in a month.
Image credits: WouldUKindlyDMBoobs
#24
Google paid me $12,000 in 2009 (adjusted for inflation) to just change a few bits of text and copy-paste some PNG and JSON files. It took me under two minutes. I wish I could do this every day.
#25
Last summer, I was mowing my yard and found a $100 bill in my yard. I luckily spotted it before turning it to mulch.
Image credits: xAsilos
#26
I bought an extra Christmas tree one year at cut your own tree pumpkin patch place. Took us an hour to get in at the start of the day. Huge line on the way out. Sold it to a dad in line for $20-30ish bucks extra. He was elated. Like there was no line to go do the stuff so the family still did have fun, but the tree line was looooooong.
#27
Won a giant stuffed sponge Bob stuffed animal at an amusement park…. got lucky spent less then a couple bucks. As I was leaving the game with my prize this dad offered me 50 bucks for it, his kid wanted it. No way I was going to carry that thing around all day it was the same size as me.
#28
Got 120 of my currency (about 25 dollars) as a private ESL tutor for a rich kid that literally slept thought my lesson and a rich douchebag-y clubhouse owner who checked his insta and watched stories like I wasn’t there.
Frustrating until I saw the money. Taught about 2 hours each. 120 before covid was a cool sum of money, that you could spend in an entire week. I don’t remember how I spent it but man it was nice. Now 120 is a couple of day’s worth of groceries…
#29
This will sound counter-intuitive, but my time in the Army was like that. Housing, food, medical attention, paid-time-off, work clothes all provided for – my paycheck was just for me and it was enough to rent an apartment off base and buy my own food and clothing. I was stationed in Germany and traveled around Europe, many times on base-supported trips. All bases had cafes and clubs with music and dancing. I was a PFC 1976-1978 and it was great, one of the best experiences of my life.
#30
Bitcoin
Bought for 50p as a joke, sold for £20K
Never doing that again.
Image credits: popeter45
#31
Bought a car that “didnt run” for $250, put some fresh gas in it and polished the paint, sold it for $2000 a week later.
Image credits: Naughtyy-Princess
#32
I worked away doing night shifts in a car factory. I got paid my regular wages plus double time for the night shift hours and spent several months being put up in a hotel and having all my food and expenses paid. The actual work was checking a couple of brackets and the rate the line moved meant that it took about 3 minutes, once every 2 hours, and there were 2 of us, so it rounded it to about 6 minutes work each per shift and the rest of the night sat around with a book or a gameboy.
#33
I have two.
1. One year I went in for my annual review and to learn what/if the raise percentage would be for the next year. I am a seasoned employee and love my job, but I’ve done the same job for years. The raise is usually tiny, like 2% or so. I walked out with my first/only “many zeroes” bonus. They forgot to tell me the previous year I qualified for them when earned; literally had no idea.
2. Super-rich friend loved her kitties too much for regular cat sitters so she paid me HUNDREDS to pop in twice a day to feed and clean up after the darlings. We got along great and I love cats, so easy.
#34
I provided the contact info for a high end builder to a client of mine. A referral if you will. Thought I was just being nice and expected nothing in return. About 5 months later I was called and told that there was a cheque waiting for me in their office. I went down and thought I might get $1000. I floated out of there with a $28,000 check in hand. Couldn’t believe it.
#35
Filled out a form and got a check for $5,000 for “unclaimed property”. I dug into it; someone made a banking error when settling the sale of a condo I used to own.
Image credits: tastytang
#36
Once my parents wanted to take me to my aunt and uncle’s house for a visit. But just that day I wanted to play a video game that I had just bought. My parents didn’t insist me much, and curiously my console breaks down and I decide to go finally.
My Aunt and Uncle gave me something worth 2000 dollars because they had just become rich and wanted to share with me because I was always visiting them. haha.
Image credits: angel__love_
#37
A 3rd time ever golfer and total stranger bet me $50 he could beat me in a straight-up match. I’m a 6 handicap. Which is decent. I play that course nearly every day. He knew this beforehand. I beat him in 10 holes (the fewest possible, total sweep). He kept trying to make more small bets on the remaining 8 holes to save his pride. I politely refused. Never saw him again. What a guy. Pretty sure he was on vacation and on a variety of intoxicants.
#38
$1 scratch off = $10,000.
#39
When my neighbor’s husband passed away, she was old and decided to sell the house and move to live with one of her children. I offered to take her cat, and she invited me into her home to take any of her husband’s books, liquors and cigars.
I took most of the liquor and all of the cigar boxes. I bought a decent sized humidor and stuck all the cigar boxes in. Most were unopened. I rarely smoked cigars but since it was all free, I didn’t mind buying the humidor. About 2 dozen boxes. I remember a lot of Punch Maduro Double Corona, Hoyo de Monterey Excalibur (smelled like chocolate!), and La Gloria Cubana. Multiple boxes of those and a lot of single boxes of other brands. I was new to cigars so I was only familiar with Punch.
Years passed and I finally finished smoking what was in the open boxes. Time to open my first brand new box. The cigar box that caught my eye was Te-Amo Toro. Big fat wooden box with a metal latch. I assumed it was an unopened box. But it wasn’t.
In it there were 13 cigars, and a money clip holding a folded wad of mostly $20 and $50 dollar bills. A few $100 bills. Was about $7500 total.
My neigbor who moved away passed shortly after she moved in with her son/daughter. I found out when I talked to the realtor selling her house a couple years prior.
I still have the cigar box ?.
#40
My friend and I were asked to play super smash bros against some people in a bar competition. Easiest $50 for us two.
#41
Bought a vintage Thorens turntable for $45 at an estate sale. It was sitting right by the register, they forgot to put it out. I sold it on eBay for over $900.
#42
Played tuba in a brass quintet for weddings. $500 for an hour of work (for each of us), and got fed an awesome dinner.
#43
Worked for TSA for a while including during peak covid. Going from thousands of people a day to maybe 40. By far the easiest money I ever made. Loads were so low we set teams up and were doing one week on and one week off for a while all paid. People complained about being bored. It was better than being cooped up in the house and the commute was heavenly.
Image credits: corgihandler
#44
Stripping. I had a lot of older regulars that would literally pay me to just eat dinner with them. Cool dudes. Not weird. (You can choose your clients)Lots of physically disabled and foreign guys. Some girls did all that extra rubbing that I never did. Got to meet some very cool people. They just wanted someone to listen. $1000+ a night for 3 hours of sitting with an older man in a while we ate burgers. (Yellow Rose in Austin still has bad a*s burgers). He paid my fees for working and bought me a Honda civic del sol. Being multilingual helps. Miss you, old man Rick. RIP. You were always a gentleman.
Image credits: classicgrinder
#45
Found a $20 bill on the street once.
#46
Did a 12 hour shift as an engineer where nothing went down or broke in that period, so made £300 to watch films and relax all night.
#47
I put 300$ into Gamestop during that whole stock thing… cashed out 900 like a week or two later.
#48
In my mid twenties I used to do IT for wealthy old folks in NYC. It basically consisted of setting up new computers, iPads, printers, etc, very basic stuff, and they’d pay me $200 an hour. Since I usually did this after my regular job, most times I was invited to stay for dinner and they paid for all the time I spent there. Word got around and I was the “on-call IT guy” for group of about 15 families but it really started cutting into my free time as I had my regular job on top of that.
#49
I bought a lesser known cryptocurrency back in 2019. It started when I was 21 and moved out of my mom’s house. It was abusive and she had no space for me.
I moved out of state to WA state. I stayed in some old lady’s apartment and pretended to be her son. It was in section 8 and she definitely did hard d***s on the low. It was a shocker and I told myself I gotta educate myself on how to build my money up. I needed to make a life for myself asap.
I got a couple different jobs as a dishwasher, but It wasn’t till I stuck with the second one for months I liked where the magic happened.
I was so fixated on getting rich from one crypto coin that I put around $2,000 into it over the course of a year. My goal was 1000 coins accumulated so every dollar price change was a free $1,000 in my mind.
Every cash tip, I immediately deposited into the BofA and tried to only eat the free lunch break meal as my only meal for the day and doused it in Ketchup for calories.
Well, COVID 19 happened. I was laid off from my job, told to go on unemployment, and then literally EVERY crypto regardless of how good it was, ballooned in price. I was now with a portfolio that was $10,000 one day, next month was $30,000 and at one point, $60,000.
I shat myself.
I must have gotten out at the right time, because I had spent over $35,000 of it over the course of a year on chipotle being door dashed daily. I had unlimited time to go to the gym everyday and bike. I was the healthiest I ever was, in the best shape, paid my share of rent, and I didn’t work the entire time. I bought whatever luxury shoes, clothes, or prescription Gucci eyeglasses I wanted to. I got Burberry sunglasses too in my prescription.
But that taught me that money goes infinitely faster than it is earned. What I mean is no matter how much money you make, your brain can find a way to make a million dollars only last months.
I should have continued to work, get a car with that money, and just try to preserve the gains.
If you guys ever do get “rich quick” off an investment, next time just funnel all the profit in the SNP500. It is the safest investment that a brainless person could make. Don’t double down, don’t use that money to invest in more risk.
I have none of that money anymore… And that coin is worth about as much as I did when I got into it… Sad. .
#50
It’s not possible anymore but back in the mid to late 2000’s I bought a $10 domain and turned it into like 250k with porn affiliate links.
#51
I made $500 in mileage + $15/hr driving one day for a job. They made me rent a car on the next trip.
#52
I once hit a telephone machine and it gave me a lot of coins.
Image credits: kitty_loove__
#53
I had a bet with a friend, that I will still be virgin in two years. Guess who won 20$.
#54
I once asked a guy for money on tinder, just to try it and he deposited 100 dollars. It never worked again.
#55
Managing people is both the easiest and highest paying job I’ve had. The caveat being it has to be in/with the right country/company/industry/team/lead assistant/department/budget/workload/geographic location/floor/cubicle placements/co-workers of other departments/building maintenance/decent commute/parking situation/break room/office with a door/and a window/luck/friends in high places… Without all of those things in your favor managing people is complete garbage.
#56
Writing clickbait articles. The cringier they were, the more I made.
#57
Told my 4yr old I would hold his dollar. Jokes on him.