Not Illegal, But: 30 Unethical Financial ‘Hacks’ That People Say Won’t Land You In Prison
If you’re looking for a way to get rich quick, listen up! All you have to do is abandon your morals and be sure not to break the law. Good luck!
With inflation rates skyrocketing in recent years and salaries seeming to remain stagnant, a little extra income is enticing for most of us. And if you keep an open mind, you just might be able to fatten up your wallet. Reddit users have recently been sharing unethical yet technically legal financial hacks, so others who are brave enough can begin to save up. Enjoy reading through these tips that might cause your accountant to raise his eyebrows, and be sure to upvote the ones you find particularly clever!
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Become a televangelist and get poor people to send you money to buy a mansion and a private jet because that’s what God wants.
I think all religious leaders are scammers who just rely on the maxim that there is a sucker born every minute.
I saw a poster in the ladies room at the KOA in Santa Fe, NM that said:
“The best way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.”
Become a politician and accept monetary gifts in exchange for favorable legislation
Make a profile of a hot woman saying you want a sperm donor, but it has to be done 'the old fashioned way', and the person has to have specific ancestry and no genetic issues.
To prove this, the donor will have to submit a genetic test, and link to 23andme. The link will be, of course, your referral link that gets you 20 bucks per person you refer.
I know a guy who took out a bunch of loans to attend dental school.
He graduated, became a dentist, and applied for a bunch of credit cards. Used the cards to pay off the loans.
Used the unmanageable credit to apply for bankruptcy, and had the debts mostly cleared.
Then he had seven years of bankruptcy on his credit report, rather than decades worth of loan payments.
There's no 'financial hack' here. Guy went bankrupt to avoid his debts. If you think having bankruptcy on your credit report at the beginning of your career is a good thing, then go ahead. It's just stupid.
When I park at the airport, paying for the lost ticket is cheaper than 3+ days of parking. So if I’m there for longer than 3 days, I just say I lost the ticket and pay the fixed price
My wife’s mom goes to the Dollar Store and buys hundreds of books for 1$ then she sells them all on Amazon for $15-$20 a book.
Leave some for people that cant afford to pay $15-20 for a book which is why they go to the dollar store in the first place. Source: I get books from dollar store and goodwill cuz I am in poverty 🙃
*First of all, you and me start working at the bank. Doesn't matter the position, okay? Just so long as we get in there, right? Then we just go there every day, do the work, gain their trust until we get them in the palm of our hand. All right?*
*So how we get the money?*
*That's the beauty of it, bro. They deposit the money into our bank accounts. Week after week, month after month. They're not even going to know they being robbed. And then 20 or 30 years later, we walk out the front door like nothing even happened.*
Set up a church and become a god fearing pastor with several tax free vacation homes.
The betting apps have sign on bonuses. Something like bet $5 and receive $150 in bonus bets. Bet your $5, then put half of the $150 on one team, half on the other. That's a free $75 for ya.
Not unethical at all since they are offering it, but figured people should know.
I opened an account on a reputable site and they gave me $100 bucks to play with. I'm now up around $800 just screwing around at $5 a pop. I haven't given them any money.
If you're expecting to pay Uncle Sam a large sum of money come tax season, find an Appraiser who is willing to appraise a really cheap painting for you and have them value it at $10-$80k then donate that painting to a non-profit. You're welcome. (It's a well-known thing that rich bastards do to avoid paying back taxes).
I would think that an appraiser would not want to do that so as not to affect his reputation.
If you've got a decent bit of land, find out what your state's requirements are for agricultural tax exemption. Significant drop in property taxes. Friend keeps six cows because that's one of the things that qualify you. She's bought the hundreds of acres and built a barn that cost more than my house to keep her horses (expensive hobby yes; but not, per that states law, agricultural use). As adding six cows turned the whole operation into agriculture and saved loads each year on property taxes. Another friend sells about $2750 in nursery stock from her greenhouse. 2500 a year is the requirement in her state.
It's not illegal. Slightly unethical because the point of the program is to help out farmers. Doing the bare minimum to qualify to save on property taxes is obviously not what they meant.
But then you have to take care of the animals and they are also expensive (vets, food, etc) so...?
My family has five acres and let the neighbors' cows graze on it for a tax break. The cows get fed, so the neighbors are happy, and we get a tax break but we don't have to care for them:)
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Trump did that with one of his golf courses. Put goats on them and only had to pay $700 a year in property taxes. Don't be a trump.
The agriculture industry is totally unhinged, both in the US, and in the EU. "If you ate today, thank a farmer". How ridiculous and infuriating. A lot of agriculture actually operates at a loss but huge subsidies keep the entire industry afloat because one, every government wants to be self-reliant on food, two, the industry has a huge lobby, three, we're all comolicit by eating meat every day, eating vegetables that aren't in season, etc. "Thank a farmer" my a*s. Who thanks a teacher, a nurse, a firefighter, or you know, the garbage crew, cleaning crew, waiters, etc? And those people make waaaay less money and have much, much less political representation than the fat, greedy, oversubsidized agriculture industry.
Have you ever met, or talked to, a real farmer, or do you get all your information from the Internet?
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Hire other people to make stuff and provide services for you and pay them less than they make for you.
Invest in weapons companies and profit off of the death of people all across the world.
Collect the pennies from a wishing well.
Buy a gas station and fill up the building with addictive junk food that causes diabetes and obesity.
If you want to keep that money, all of it, just give it to your wife.
See, the IRS allows you a one-time-only gift to your spouse.
It’s good up to $60,000… tax-free. IRS can’t touch one cent.
Become a senator, learn when to buy or sell, vote down any bill to block such behavior, repeat.
If you work from home, run an LLC and write off everything imaginable. A quarter of your home is your office. Write it off. Lunch out? But it on the business card. Anything you buy that's tech-related. I've even known people who write off vacations, with the idea that if they got audited they'd just say they were meeting a potential business partner.
Of course, you can write off anything business-related. That said, be careful. Tax fraud is a serious offence and almost always results in prison time.
Become a politician and tell your family members (e.g. husband) to trade stocks that you have info on.
I know this software that takes the fraction of a penny leftover from each transaction, and there are millions a day, and puts it in your bank accounts.
It's very complicated. It's uh it's aggregate, so I'm talking about fractions of a penny here. And over time they add up.
It’s like the take a penny tray.
I'm just talking about fractions of a penny here. But we do it from a much bigger tray and we do it a couple a million times.
Like to travel? Become a part time travel agent. Travel becomes a write off. You’re going to travel anyway, might as well get some help. So what if your business doesn’t make you money, you’re writing off travel that you were going to take anyway. You’re going to need a new camera and a pc of course. There’s no crime in being a bad business man. Just don’t do it for too long. Sooner or later the taxman will be looking at you asking questions. 3-5 years then wrap it up. A few years later you can start something new.
Are there still travel agents? I thought they all went out of business when Expedia and other online travel apps came into existence.
I've made tens of thousands of dollars opening bank accounts for the sign up bonuses. Some banks like Chase, I've had 7 accounts over the years.
Research "Step-up in basis" loophole if you have any assets.
Also, set up trusts to protect your assets.
Also, if you're an independent contractor, look up all the legal tax deductions to lower your taxable income (for example, business expenses, solo 401k contributions, HSAs, etc.)
The rich get richer because the rich usually have financial advisors/lawyers that know all the legal loopholes to stay rich and get richer.
Almost anyone can take advantage of these financial "hacks," you just need to find them and apply them.
Take a penny…but don’t give one
My aunt was a tax accountant and said if you donate a car to charity, the IRS will never audit it if you claim a value under $5,000.
Use this method to make billions; open company A that has intellectual rights, then open company b as construction business but and renovate properties. Take all money company b receives and sent to company A to pay for intellectual property, company b pays zero creditors and files bankruptcy. Company A keeps all money, then opens company c and repeat the process.
My Amex gets 6% cashback at grocery stores on up to $6,000/year. If you buy $6,000 worth of $500 Visa gift cards at the grocery store with the Amex, you get $360 cashback. Subtracting the gift card processing fee (usually $5-6 a card), you basically turn it into $290-300 of free money.
Did you ever actually buy a gift card at a grocery store and get cash back?? Amex closed that loophole a long time ago. Before that they were giving points for travelers checks, everyone in my company was buying tens of thousands of travelers checks and getting free flights and all these other perks, before they closed the loophole.
Start a bogus GoFundMe campaign. The amount of gullible people that get ripped off is amazing.
Roth your kids. Tax code says they have to do age appropriate work, so they can't do bookkeeping, but they can be models the day they are born. License their image and likeness for 6k (or W-2 them if you have a small business that does payroll), put the money into roth, and invest in an index ETF.
Money doubles every ~7 years but the dollar loses half its value to inflation every 20 years. By the time they are 59.5y/o this works out to about $290k in todays dollars ($2.3mil in year 2083 dollars).
If a parent dies with not huge credit card debt they never bother to go after the estate for repayment. It just isn't worth the trouble. Eventually the executor will get a 1099-C for forgiveness of debt but the IRS doesn't have time to pursue the matter either. So it just goes away.
Source: When my mom died we got a 1099-C well after the estate settled for a credit card account nobody knew she had. It was for about $4000.
My mom developed dementia and then Alzheimers. My sister and I discovered she'd racked up about $12,000 in credit card debt. When we took over her finances, we paid off as much as we could, but Capital One ain't gettin' a dime. Sorry, bro. She was making under $2,000 a month. Why did they think she needed a $10,000 credit limit? Sounds like a poor business decision on their part. LOL
Sign up as a Uber driver and drive your spouse to airport for their work trips
Invest in startup mining operations in developing countries. I did with coal. Turned $700 into over $3k in about 2 weeks before i sold the shares.
No clue what happened to that company in the long term but i think it went under which is good at least.
Filthiest money ive ever held. Never invested again, too much guilt knowing i became a small gear in the problem that drives the world to ruin.
"Invest in startup mining operations in developing countries?" No risks of any kind at all! Trust me, I'm the internet.
If you have a very elderly parent, gift them $18,000 of stock every year. In fact, if you are married, you can gift them $18,000 and your spouse can gift them $18,000. If you have two very elderly parents, that is $72k/year you can gift them tax free.
The parent receives the stocks at your cost basis if you do it as a brokerage to brokerage transfer.
When your parent passes, they give you the stock as an inheritance. But it comes to you with its value at the time of their death. So you never pay any taxes on the appreciation of the stock. That is the hack - avoiding any taxes on the stock appreciation.
For example, you are 60 and have been saving & investing your entire life. Stocks you bought decades ago have increased mutliple-fold. Your parents are both 85. Spending the next 2 years gifting them $36k/year cost basis may get you back $400k and avoid all taxation.
Same is true for someone that did well with company stock from an IPO or hit it big on one or two individual stocks.
But then you have to trust them not to sell it all and run off on a round-the-world cruise!
Go to hotels for free breakfast. Never had a hotel check that you're a guest, unless it was a nicer one with a legit restaurant... Avoid those
Put all your purchases on a good credit card with juicy cash back rewards and set autopay so you can never be late. The credit card company will label you as a deadbeat because you're costing them lots of money without being able to milk interest fees off you.
If you run a small business. Toward the end of the financial year, buy hundreds of dollars worth of scratch tickets. The important part is that it has to be one single continuous reel of tickets. They are made so there is a guaranteed win every few tickets. After you scratch them all, keep the winning ones for yourself, and tax-deduct the losing ones as if they were gifted to the employees for some b******t reason.
This is getting silly . . . why not try something safer, like going to the casino? (I'm imagining my former Statistics professors white-knuckling their desks after reading this).
Buy an atm. Set atm fee to 10$.
Get 100 bank accounts with atm fees reimbursed.
Take money out of the atm every day from each account.
Collect 10$ fees (1000$ a day)
Eat a few grapes for free when at the grocery store.
Works for cherries and green beans too. Source: I was a hungry (greedy) child
Purchase a single home property and turn it into a rental where the rent is like three times the mortgage cost
"Purchase a single home property" Anyone out there who can explain how to buy property without having money? Even with the mortgage I need to have a financial plan, a starter budget or anything like that. Well, in my country at least.
You can sue any town/municipality and their police dept and make at least $30k total each time. The reason is for violating your first amendment rights. Just walk into a post office lobby and film… totally legal to do. You can also go to police stations and as long as you’re in the lobby you’re on public property where it is entirely legal to film. They WILL use every tactic in the book to scare you away but if you stand your ground and know your rights you eventually get the power hungry guy who comes and tackles you to the ground and arrests you. You just made $30k and you get to be free to go within 20 minutes.
This is probably the worst advice I've seen here. If you set out to do stuff like this, don't be surprised if you learn you actually did something you shouldn't have. I used to deal with people like you all the time when I was a cop. Best thing to do is just let you film, stand there and look stupid till you get bored and go find something else to do. Most law enforcement agencies are wise to this type of b******t. They will mostly completely ignore you.
Buy patents and spend all your time in court sueing people.
Patents are not cheap. Spending all your time in court is not cheap. Heck, suing people isn't cheap . . . but you do you.
If you don’t pay your medical bills, it doesn’t impact your credit score
🙄 I mean, it's dishonest but I don't even think this is true. I've had medical bills on my credit report before.
Drag barbeques from people's yards to the curb.
Once the barbeque is at the curb it's considered garbage and not illegal to take and resell for cash.
But going into someone's yard and taking their BBQ is quite illegal, no?
1. Be a cop
2. Commit a crime (but not too heinous!)
3. Get put on paid or administrative leave for 5 years collecting your free money for no work
4. Go back to work and repeat
So, the cop was convicted of the not too heinous crime? Otherwise, he is presumed innocent, just like you.
There are about a million subscription services for things nowadays - meal kits, entertainment, beauty products, etc. A lot of them offer free trials or a discount on your first
And half of those are scam services that just want your credit card number. The remainder take an act of god to unsubscribe from their program.
Secure a conservatorship of a lonely elderly neighbor. Then pay yourself a conservatorship fee to manage them until they pass away.
Sign up for bank accounts that offer a bonus, collect the bonus then close the account. A lot of them allow you to open another account within 180 days and do it again. Easy $200-$400 each time
Save thousands on expensive cigarettes by taking up second-hand smoking instead.
This is dumb. Why mix a lame joke into an actual list of unethical life hacks?
Sleep with old people
But I already do that...and so does my wife! Where does the money come in?
Setting up an emergency fund to collect emergency donations… then keep 90% of the $.
We all be scrolling this post looking for tips on a new Side Hustle.
This whole list was just a sarcastic description of the way rich people steal from everyone. But they do not get prosecuted.
Many of these are just flat-out fraud/theft. They're not 'unethical yet technically legal'.
Yes, and most of the others are fanciful, fake or frankly silly. Anyone who's really discovered a sure-fire legal way to get rich isn't going to post about it all over the internet.
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I know it's about unethical ones, but too many are illegal, stupid, dangerous or more than just "unethical". Plus, a lot are about tax evasion - and these are the same people who will whine about a broken street light. Can the stupids finally learn what taxes are used for? If you don't like to pay that much, go after your country's military budget. Doesn't have the USA to be too high.
Every election season, my neighbor across the street posts a sign that reads 'taxation is theft'. He installs this sign about 3 meters from the public fire hydrant that was paid for with taxes. Nor do I ever hear him complain about said theft when the roads are plowed and sanded.
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Not really a hack since we didn't ask for it. But we are planning on fencing our entire yard this upcoming summer. Already had a small portion fenced from the previous owners with material that was really good quality. Lady crashed into it, we got an estimate for a fix for the insurance and got a hefty some back. Our plan was to remove it anyways. It'll look a bit ugly until the summer but that money is really going to help with the future updates!
Neoliberal governments pursuing a fiscal surplus at all costs and cutting public services to the bone to achieve it despite the fact that a fiscal surplus means that the government is destroying non-government money without adding anything at all to the government's monetary reserves (which are infinite under a fiat currency).
Many of these are just flat-out fraud/theft. They're not 'unethical yet technically legal'.
Yes, and most of the others are fanciful, fake or frankly silly. Anyone who's really discovered a sure-fire legal way to get rich isn't going to post about it all over the internet.
Load More Replies... I know it's about unethical ones, but too many are illegal, stupid, dangerous or more than just "unethical". Plus, a lot are about tax evasion - and these are the same people who will whine about a broken street light. Can the stupids finally learn what taxes are used for? If you don't like to pay that much, go after your country's military budget. Doesn't have the USA to be too high.
Every election season, my neighbor across the street posts a sign that reads 'taxation is theft'. He installs this sign about 3 meters from the public fire hydrant that was paid for with taxes. Nor do I ever hear him complain about said theft when the roads are plowed and sanded.
Load More Replies... Not really a hack since we didn't ask for it. But we are planning on fencing our entire yard this upcoming summer. Already had a small portion fenced from the previous owners with material that was really good quality. Lady crashed into it, we got an estimate for a fix for the insurance and got a hefty some back. Our plan was to remove it anyways. It'll look a bit ugly until the summer but that money is really going to help with the future updates!
Neoliberal governments pursuing a fiscal surplus at all costs and cutting public services to the bone to achieve it despite the fact that a fiscal surplus means that the government is destroying non-government money without adding anything at all to the government's monetary reserves (which are infinite under a fiat currency).
