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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!
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#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.
#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 9 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.
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 9 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 9 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...
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 9 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 9 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!
#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 9 months ago (edited)
Internet made scammers and stupid to show themselves in a spot never before in the history of humankind.
#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 9 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.
#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).
#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.
#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 9 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.
#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 9 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 9 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 9 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.
#19
Friend of mine got hit by a car. made 220k.
Binky Melnik 9 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 9 months ago
Um…and no one from the IRS or the government ever questioned where that money came from?
#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.
#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.
#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 9 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.
#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 9 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.
#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.
#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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