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28 Totally Random And Absurd Ways People Got Rich, From Pure Chance To Pure Stupidity
They say money doesn’t grow on trees, but for some folks, it might just seem like it does. One day, you’re hustling for rent, and the next, you wake up rich because you accidentally invested in the right thing at the right time. Ah, the dream! While most of us are out here budgeting our coffee orders, some folks are casually stumbling into fortunes.
Whether it’s a forgotten Bitcoin wallet, a weirdly profitable side hustle, or just plain dumb luck, overnight wealth is a wild concept that one Redditor recently dove into, and trust me, the stories are pretty fascinating.
More info: Reddit
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#1
Saw this one a*****e who wanted to bring manufacturing to America and restore Christian values.
So he printed Bibles in China, sold them to get rich for $50 a pop, and never even had to act pious.
Absurd!
Regina Holt 10 months ago
One version of it cost $60, the other cost $90, which of course included extra "patriotic stuff" that has no place in a bible. Big a$$hole, very very big a$$hole, very unamerican, Awful thing to say, just awful, it's awful, just awful. (that is my impression of his response to your comment.
Riley Quinn 10 months ago
Tramp adheres to Barnum's observation "there's a sucker born every minute" and, not only has this advice made him rich, it's made him a king.
David 10 months ago
If you read the reports from the time, Trump paid a Florida printing company to print them in the US. The company subcontracted to a Chinese firm to print it for $3 a copy, to increase their profits, and removed any printed in China from it. Trump has a ongoing lawsuit against the print company for defrauding him
RELATED:
#2
My little neighbor kid years ago, who was home schooled, started buying all the domain names in the town where I sold real estate. This was circa 2000 & I didn’t really understand why I should care about any of that when he tried to get me to buy up a bunch of the names for the town. Long story short, GO Daddy bought out this 12 old kid for 2 million dollars.
I still see the kid on Facebook traveling around the world & doing all kinds of cool stuff. He’s about 35 or so now.
Jaya 10 months ago
I get that he was just a kid, so I don't blame him. But the practice itself is kinda unethical in my opinion. You don't want the domains yourself and are only buying them so that you can force someone else to later pay you a lot for them. You're not actually adding any value yourself, you're just taking advantage of the fact that someone else really wants it. Not that different from the people who are purposefully buying up all the tickets to concerts and then reselling them for insane prices. It doesn't make someone a genius, but an a*****e.
#3
A story I remember is a project in business school to create a product and sell it and present the results. This guy decides to collect tumbleweeds and sells them. He does very well. He quit college and started a tumbleweed rental business to people making movies (or whoever else rents a tumbleweed, I am no expert). Since he was the only tumbleweed guy, he had a monopoly on the tumbleweed renting market.
Petra Peitsch 10 months ago
Hey, if there are enough dumb people, who are willing to pay for this ... Especially in movies, making those tumbleweeds from reused plastic ...... yes, once it would cost more, than just renting. But practically they can be used forever. And nobody would tell the difference in a movie between a real tumbleweed or a plastic one.
Offbeat Quinoa 10 months ago
Honestly imagine you’re making a movie and you’ve got enough small details to worry about. What’s more dumb - wasting a day or two sending a couple PAs out to the desert to find dozens of tumbleweeds that are perfectly shaped for your movie, or saving time and effort by paying the tumbleweed guy and focusing on more important issues?
Load More Replies... Riley Quinn 10 months ago
Tumbleweed (Russian thistle) seeds were accidently mixed with the flax seeds brought into S. Dakota by Russian immigrants in 1870. Not being a native plant in the US, they're considered an invasive, and extremely hardy, species. So tumbleweeds in most Westerns taking place before 1870 are just plain wrong.
For generations, making money was a structured process: get a degree, land a steady job, save, invest, and eventually retire with a reasonable amount of cash and maybe a house if you played your cards right.
But in today’s world? Can folks get rich with a 9 to 5 job? That’s cute. The internet pretty much rewrote the rules, and now, a viral video or a meme-worthy moment can catapult someone into riches faster than a stock market crash.
#4
Friend hooked up with a girl at a college party. They dated off and on (hooked up), nothing super serious. Years later they reconnected and eventually got engaged. Then she let him know she was an heiress to a large company and was worth north of 10Mil. Dude hasn’t had a real job in 10 years.
Riley Quinn 10 months ago
Smart woman. See if there's anything there for a few years before telling him she's rich beyond his wildest dreams.
#5
A friend of my brother told him toinvest 100 dollars on bitcoin on 2010. The friend did, my brother did but sold after having a 50% ROI.
They both forgot about it for about 9 years until the friend heard on the news that bitcoin was going crazy. He had like 500 bitcoins that he never thought anything about, even forgot that he had (he thought he had sold along with my brother, but he forgot to do so on that day and just never thought about it).
He sold it all and became a millionaire with literally no work whatsoever, just pure luck and lack of long-term memory.
AnnaB 10 months ago
In late 2009/early 2010 I read an article about this new thing called 'Bitcoin'. I didn't really understand it but it sounded intriguing. The coins were about 5 cents a coin at the time. I planned on investing $250.00, figuring I could afford to lose it if the thing turned out to be a flop. I got my wallet, my passwords, everything you needed except for completing the transaction. I chickened out. The last time I looked, a single coin was worth $98,000. That $250 dollars would have gotten me 5,000 coins...
Petra Peitsch 10 months ago
Bitcoin is a pyramide-scheme... so a big NOPE. If I wanna try my luck, I'll play Lotto.
Offbeat Quinoa 10 months ago
My bf’s friend tried to get him into Bitcoin when it was first coming out. My bf refused, thinking it was dumb. Friend invested a couple hundred bucks and reaped thousands. My bf is still sour about it 🥲
In the 1950s, wealth came from industrial jobs or land ownership, while today, unconventional jobs pop up out of nowhere, and no one could have imagined them a few decades ago. These days, people are making six figures by livestreaming their pet’s daily adventures. Job evolution is fun, isn't it?
The modern economy doesn’t just reward creativity; it basically demands it. Suddenly, jobs like content creator and AI prompt engineer are legitimate career paths, and let’s not forget the people raking in cash from posting pics of their food. The hustle has truly evolved.
#6
My friend is an electrician. At his old job the factory was shutting down and they were selling everything off. At the end they sold the copper rights to the building and he and another guy put in a bid for 500.00 and won. They each pulled in about 60,000.00 worth of copper in two weeks, then they ran out of time and the building was torn down.
john doe 10 months ago
My dad was an HVAC technician, he used to install the huge ac units on the roofs of large buildings, he would ask if he can take the copper out of the old ones and the owners would almost always tell him yes. He could get about a grand worth of copper out of one in a couple hours of work. He made a lot of money off of scrap copper back about 25 years ago.
#7
Those "anti-5G" protective stickers people put on their phones that cost $50 each. My aunt bought a pack and proudly showed me how it "blocks radiation" while... still using 5G normally.
Petra Peitsch 10 months ago
Wait. Are you telling me, that people are willing to pay 50 bucks for some stickers saying, they-are-blocking-5G (whatever it means in their minds), and trully believe, just because of the sticker, it will work? I don't wanna think, people are really so dumb!
Binky Melnik 10 months ago
Uppers. They think there’s some technology in the sticker that’ll block radiation. They also don’t seem to understand that there’re different types of radiation. To them, radiation = Chernobyl. They think their microwaves use the same type of radiation. 🙄 That’s why it’s sooo easy to get money out of them: they know nothing, but believe they know everything. 😞
Load More Replies... WindySwede 10 months ago
*reflecting it into brain instead*? Or causes the phone to boost power if that block any, and you get more radiation anyway?
Offbeat Quinoa 10 months ago
I’m going to go ahead and assume they do literally nothing 🥲
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Riley Quinn 10 months ago
Some people are border collies, but most people are the sheep the border collies herd.
#8
Hawk Tuah did the influencer speedrun - went viral off a random moment, started a merchline, podcast and hired a media team, went on live TV, then torpedoed her entire fanbase by rug pull scamming them through crypto. All in a span of less than a year. And the sad thing is that viral moment was like the dumbest thing ever.
Petra Peitsch 10 months ago (edited)
Internet made scammers and stupid to show themselves in a spot never before in the history of humankind.
Susie Elle 10 months ago
What did they expect from a rando who yelled something while drunk that the media then took on a rollercoaster ride? Like, what was she supposed to add to anything?
Offbeat Quinoa 10 months ago
Right, like she didn’t get famous for being smart or talented, it was just a funny drunk candid moment.
Load More Replies... Riley Quinn 10 months ago
Such a sad story of a vulgar drunk who viral and became just another influencer. I'd pity her if I had time to waste.
Sillywaster Stayalone 10 months ago
Now the SOP is well established, a corporate needs to hire contract workers for an hour and try something the backend team thinks will result in virality, if it works then fine, otherwise hire another one at another place. Once something works, do what she did. I think the costs of this business are low and payout can be huge.
#9
Girl I knew and her siblings inherited a bunch of land in the Appalachias, the siblings all wanted the flat ground along the rivers and basically bullied her into taking the hilly areas that were undevelopable. 3 years later, oil and gas boom happened and because she was the highest point on the property, she owned the best access point to the minerals. She made probably north of a couple mil. Fulfilled her dream of owning and breeding race horses. Her family barely made a couple grand.
But here’s the thing: sometimes success isn’t about hustle at all, and Reddit is packed with stories of people who got rich in the most ridiculous ways. Take, for example, the guy who bought Bitcoin on a whim, forgot about it, and years later discovered he was sitting on a goldmine.
And then there’s the entrepreneurial genius who decided to sell tumbleweeds. Yup, actual tumbleweeds. If that’s not thinking outside the box, I don’t know what is.
Of course, luck isn’t everything—though I wouldn’t mind stumbling upon a forgotten Bitcoin stash myself. Experts love to say that wealth is all about strategy, adaptability, and diversifying income streams, but let’s be real: sometimes, you just need a lucky break.
#10
Youtube, I've baffled how so many genuine dumbasses make money on that platform. And no they're not dumb in terms of using youtube, I mean in general the content they put out is pure brainrot.
MagicJacket 10 months ago
I would do it too if I had any idea what content to put up there. I would LOVE to be doing a lot of work on that instead of what I am doing.
Scott Rackley 10 months ago
There are some very good scientific and history channels, which is all I use youtube for.
Day Andie 10 months ago
I'm 71, and I don't have much patience for b******t, and there's a lot of b******t and gross stuff on YouTube. But I'm really getting into a lot of the good stuff that is out there. Pretty amazing if you want tutorials on just about anything, and there's lots of music and art or movie videos that are very entertaining. As always, you have to be selective.
SirWriteALot 10 months ago
It may be dumb but there are people watching it. And you better believe that each and every one of those "millionaire" youtubers are working their butts off.
Binky Melnik 10 months ago
Nowhere does he say he follows ‘em.Just look at the stuff YouTube recommends to you: Every now and then, you think “You have GOT to be kidding!”
Load More Replies... #11
My parents both died in one year and didn’t tell me I had a massive cash inheritance and trust fund (perpetual mineral shares in the family’s ‘secret’ oil company/land).
Offbeat Quinoa 10 months ago
My aunt passed away a while back and left my sister and I $100,000 each, to be used for school. My grandpa, who was in charge of the estate, kept it from us for years. I paid for all my own school and I’m well invested in a career by now. And now he tells me 😅 like it’s a little late my dude, I could have used that years ago instead of working 2 full time jobs while going to school part time and being miserable every day
#12
My buddy dated this girl in school who’s mom started dating and then married a very rich tv and IP creator. He sold some IP during the buy up by streaming services. Well then my buddy married the daughter for their wedding the rich tv creator gave them a $100m trust fund. So basically he married someone who he met when they both were poor and became rich because of her mom. .
Side hustles aren’t just trendy anymore—they’re practically necessary. Whether it’s selling handcrafted jewelry on Etsy, flipping domain names, or turning your expertise into a monetized YouTube channel, there are endless ways to make an extra buck.
And if all else fails, there’s always that guy who literally gets paid to nap. Okay, where do I sign up? Honestly, if that’s not your dream job, we can’t be friends.
#13
Lots of people get rich just by being born. They’ve never done anything to merit it. They never will have to. Their parents may be good, maybe bad. But they will have an advantage in life from their first breath.
Jaya 10 months ago
And the same is also true, on a lower level, for being born in a first world country. Sure, you still have to work hard, but many people in other countries work equally hard but can't even afford to feed their kids.
Offbeat Quinoa 10 months ago
Exactly. I’m lucky to be born in a country where a pretty normal job can afford my own rent and groceries, even if it’s tight sometimes. Some people in some countries are working twice as hard as me for less than half the wage, and they have families to feed unlike me. We are very lucky.
Load More Replies... #14
Oh a guy I know had a scam running - he opened a staffing business where he had people paying him to connect them to jobs in local corporate offices and such. It was usually stuff in sales and temp work - but he made tons of money doing it.
Anyway, he eventually got sued by 3-4 people who claimed they paid him for his services and he never delivered them jobs that lasted beyond a couple of weeks. He closes the business and dissolves everything, moves to another city - and f*****g does it again - the guy is loaded and had no trouble securing investors and business partners. Again, he gets sued. Closes the business and starts over a 3rd time.
Petra Peitsch 10 months ago
I don't really get the concept of recruitment companies. They made their way in Europe too, but I never ever would apply for a job through them. IF a company is not paying any attention for hiring, and paying another business to do the job for them, than I don't want to work for such a company.
Jac Carr 10 months ago (edited)
From a company's point of view, the agency weeds out unsuitable people and sends them the most qualified. Considering the amount of people who apply for jobs they have no knowledge about or experience of, when experience is specifically required, is astounding. For every job I advertise for the hotel I work at, 90% of applications are total garbage
Load More Replies... #15
Owns the #1 playlist for white noise on spotify. I am still not really sure how he makes money off of it, but he gets like 20k a week.
Lila Allen 10 months ago
He makes money because when people search " white noise" his is the first that comes up so they choose him. He's basically profiting off laziness. Good on him.
Once upon a time, careers were simple: pick a trade, stick with it for 40 years, retire with a pension. Now? The job market is like the wild west. The rise of the gig economy and side hustles has completely reshaped how people make a living. Instead of one steady job, many people juggle multiple income streams, from freelance work to content creation.
Back in the day, telling your grandma you made money by reselling sneakers online would have gotten you a few side-eyes and maybe a prayer circle. Now? It’s a legit career move. And with AI and automation on the rise, who knows what careers will pop up next? One thing’s for sure: adaptability is the new job security.
#16
My mam got a frankly ugly looking oil painting for free from my brothers thrift shop ,coz he cudnt sell it not even to a blind shopper who went there she hated it but the thing was so big, my brother needed it put of the shop to use that space for stuff that actually sold ,so she took it home, looked it up ,and once it was appraised turns out it was worth £10000 because it was by some artist that is only well known by the art community , so ugly as f*** painting went on ebay ,the winning bid was a few pounds over £15000 , while she liked the money she was more delighted that she didnt have to put that eyesore up on a wall in her house.
#17
Back in early 2000s this one kid figured out how to make a website. He made a million pixel square and sold each pixel as adspace for 1$ each. So he made 1 million dollars. It became a game for people to buy 1 ad slot and try and find your ad.
Hippopotamuses 10 months ago (edited)
I remember this. I suspect he did very well in later life.
#18
My brother in law got run over by a semi...got seven hundred thousand dollars..blew through it so fast it was like he never got it ..lol.
Lowrider 56 10 months ago
I had a cousin who got run over by a train when he was just a kid. Lost part of his arm and leg. Got a big settlement, . He couldn't touch the principal until he was 21 but he got a check every month from the interest on the settlement. When he turned 21 he just went crazy with the money. He blew it all in a couple years, moved back in with his mom and died from a heroin overdose.
Hippopotamuses 10 months ago
Run over by, or hit by? Where a semi is concerned, this is an important distinction.
#19
Friend of mine got hit by a car. made 220k.
Binky Melnik 10 months ago
I dunno about you, but I wouldn’t trade being crippled for ANY amount of money. I don’t care how much it is. I’d rather be able to walk and take care of myself!
#20
This guy bought bitcoin “for fun” ended up becoming incredibly wealthy when bitcoin took off, and bought a large house for him and his family.
At the end of the day, there’s no single roadmap to getting rich. Some people plan, invest, and work their way to wealth, while others just happen to be in the right place at the right time.
So, whether you’re grinding away at your side hustle or hoping to wake up to a surprise inheritance, just know that opportunities are everywhere—you just have to be ready to grab them or, you know, accidentally forget about a Bitcoin stash for a decade.
#21
Knew a guy I went to school with. We were not friends or anything, but in the same year. Early 00s, he started smuggling d***s into the country. This was pre 9/11, so could get away with a lot more. Quit after a couple of years when he made enough bank. Bought a property portfolio of around 20 houses and rents them out for a monthly income of around 15k, while still having the value of his portfolio increase. See him driving around in a Lotus now and again. Thick as s**t and would be earning minimum wage if it wasn't for his "enterprise".
StarCrossedFriday 10 months ago
Um…and no one from the IRS or the government ever questioned where that money came from?
Lila Allen 10 months ago
As long as the title company doesn't raise the red flag, real estate is a great way to launder money.
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#22
I met one of the founders of the shoe brand On at a BBQ I hosted.
Yep. Runner made shoes in his living room with 3 friends. Now challenging Nike.
General Anaesthesia 10 months ago
The answer is in the post, On. On dot com for the website.
Load More Replies... #23
My friend was homeless living in his van, working as a PA for a movie. He met this pretty woman who worked crew and they started dating turns out she is an heiress to billions.
He is a SAHD to their kids.
He takes a lot of topless pics by their infinity pool.
Offbeat Quinoa 10 months ago (edited)
Where did it say he has no life purpose? Yall need to get over the fact that having a career does NOT equal “life purpose” 😂 I feel bad for those of you that think the only possible purpose you can have in life is to work some kind of full time job.
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#24
My friend got hit by a car and used the insurance settlement to put a down payment on some condos he rented and flipped then sold after a boom and made millions on the deal. Good old fashioned gentrification.
Aaron Miller 10 months ago (edited)
Gentrification: rich folks "discover" a neighborhood, drive up prices, push out long-time residents, and replace culture with cold brew and condos. Sucks.
LooseSeal's $10 Banana 10 months ago
Gentrification. Also known as "Making Positive Improvements to Your Property"
General Anaesthesia 10 months ago
"... and often displacing current inhabitants in the process."
Load More Replies... #25
I know a person who became a millionaire overnight through bitcoin. he was a student in i don't know which semester, but dropped out and didn't work before and still doesn't. the lucky one. how many millions he has, i don't know, but i think more than 1 million.
StarCrossedFriday 10 months ago
Sadly, one million won’t even get you that far these days. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a lot more than I have - but I’ve heard plenty of stories of people who won around that much on the lottery and lost/spent it all within a year or so.
DeoManus Argentem 10 months ago
If invested it -could- easily last you a lifetime, if we're talking USD and not like Jamaican or Australian dollars or others... the S&P goes up on average 10%/year over something like the past 75+ years including the very few down years ... so $100k, pretty good living in 99% of the world! Can juice it even more by wisely selling calls against your S&P etf to the tune of $20-30k+/month pretty conservatively, and all that is compounding as well (so you can buy more and thusly sell even more calls if you please)!
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Sean Sean 10 months ago
While you can make money in bitcoins, it's damn hard to convert that into real $.
DeoManus Argentem 10 months ago
What do mean? It's as easy as selling any other asset into cash - the process is certainly no more difficult than selling a stock. I withdraw fiat from my profits/loans every couple of months to my USD checking account (JPMorgan/Chase bank, largest bank in the world, so nothing shady) to live off of - my 75-year old mother also manages to do it as well. Yes, I pay taxes and everything on it. I imagine it's only difficult/shady if you live somewhere it's banned, but that's very few places in the world!
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#27
R/wallstreetbets
while most are idiots losing money every once in a while someone there makes an absolutely wild and stupid bet (because there is no plans - some don't even know what makes a call/put different) and accidentally earns 100k+ because the next day the company they randomly chose announced a merger agreement or whatever.
AsylumWalker 10 months ago
Only if you have actual knowledge of what's gonna happen
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#28
Friend became a millionaire off memecoins (crypto) overnight. Went from can’t pay rent to chillin in Oaxaca. Insane.
What do you think ?
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