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Sometimes in life, making a fortune is just the luck of the draw.
Maybe you’re in the right place at the right time and you randomly make a boatload of cash.
It really does happen!
And you’re about to hear some true stories about people who made a lot of cash by sheer randomness.
Enjoy these stories from folks on AskReddit.
1. All because of a camera.
“I bought a waterproof camera back in 2010 and thought it would be cool to try it out at the new water park that just opened.
1 year later the video blew up making me tons of money monthly. I still make some during the summer months but not much. Now I’m sitting at just over 100,000,000 views.”
2. A little dog.
“In the ’90s I fostered a dog for some friends who were leaving town and left the dog with me. This dog immediately made an impression upon me, and even though I really didn’t want a pet at the time, he was such an amazing dog, he convinced me otherwise. He was super smart, half black lab, half pit bull. I called him “wisdom” because he was so smart.
Fast forward a few years I used him as a mascot for a recording studio I set up. I registered the domain name wisdom.com. My dog passed away several years later and I was heartbroken and depressed for many years.
I maintained the domain name even though I didn’t really have any projects associated with it. Over the years people made offers on the domain name but I always passed. The domain was a homage to my long lost best friend.
Then in 2000 with the dot-com boom, there was renewed interest in domains and IPOs. I had a few groups bugging me for the domain name and kept increasing their offers. Eventually the numbers got into the “life changing” areas of money, and I couldn’t ignore them.
I originally secured the wisdom.com domain name for nothing. In the early days of the Internet, it didn’t cost any money to register a domain name. You just had to fill out the right forms. I actually would never have to pay any domain renewal fees if it wasn’t for a sysadmin that made changes to the domain and accepted new terms of service that forced me to have to pay renewal fees.
Otherwise, the $475,000 I was ultimately offered in cash would have been pure profit. But instead my cost was a few hundred dollars over the year. Still a significant windfall that gave me the opportunity to take that money and create another cool community of wonderful people.
I continue to be in awe that my little dog, Wisdom, had the ability to bestow such an amazing gift upon me so many years later, and I’m determined to use that gift to help others. I took the money to create a special space that is a makerspace and club to help others.”
3. Neighbors.
“My neighbor died with no friends or family and left everything in her will to us.
Everyone always asks if we were great neighbors to her?
I’d say no, we were just neighbors and treated her as we would want to be treated and did neighborly duties for her. If it snowed we cleared her driveway without her asking, took care of her cats if she went to the beach, say Hello if we saw her.
She was a tough cookie and an alpha female, would be the best way to put it. She hated if I played basketball in the driveway and when we were cleaning out her garage after she died we found 3 of my old basketballs.
But she was also the type of person if she wanted an apple pie she would bake an apple pie and take a slice and bring the rest over to us.”
4. Wow.
“My wife’s aunt died.
She had been institutionalized her whole life and neither of us had ever even met her. We kind of forgot about it for a few months until my wife’s uncle emailed her and said she was going to be getting some money.
We were like oh, OK, that’s kinda weird, but not complaining.
Then my wife got a phone call from the uncle one evening. I heard a lot of “ums,” “OKs,” and “geeze, wows.” Turned out we were getting over $300,000.
We were both grinding away making $15 an hour and barely making rent every month, and then boom. Outta nowhere.
That ended up being the difference between having a house and not having a house, being able to start a family and not being able to start a family, and having a retirement fund vs just hoping not to get evicted every month.”
5. Dirty money?
“I found 3,600 dollars in a food takeout box in the middle of a giant field.
I live in a rich area and lot of drug deals happen so it’s possible I stole multiple thousands of dollars from a drug dealer on accident.”
6. One timer.
“I won $5,000 playing bingo on a cruise.
I have only been on one cruise, and it was the only time I have played bingo in my life. I have retired from both…”
7. Getting paid.
“Worked a job for a long time. Got hurt on the job. They instead of helping me terminated me. Got a lawyer.
A year later got 260,000 for the whole fiasco. Not sure if this counts but that’s my story.”
8. That’s crazy!
“I started an Amazon private label business on a whim in 2015. I made about 25% of the sale in profit after product, shipping, and advertising costs.
Sales doubled every month for six months June $4k, July $8k August $18k, September $40k, October $84k November $175k, December $362k.
I didn’t know what to do. I quit my job in January to focus on growing the business, but my time was spent mostly trying to fend off competition copying my listing and posting fraudulent reviews and then lowering my price in the Reece to the bottom. It went well for a few years, but I never made as much as I made that first December.”
9. A huge settlement.
“When I was 17 about to turn 18 my mom told me to open a bank account because I was going to get around 500-600 from my dad.
Opened the bank account, signed the papers she needed me to and got a whopping $15,400 deposited into my bank at 18 years old.
2 years ago (22 at this point) come to find out he gets a huge settlement for a car accident (I think?) and get another 15k disbursed over 2.5 years. Idk if it was back child support or what but I was really blessed.”
10. Happy birthday!
“I was celebrating my 20th birthday.
Decided to go to the nice casino an hour away from campus with my then boyfriend. We played bingo because that’s what I could afford and it occupied some time. We lost. I called my dad (he loves casinos when he has the money to go).
He told me to play 3 card poker. I had watched him play before but I didn’t know how and was on my last $20 to my name. He told me that would be enough for a hand or two and just give it a shot, the dealer would explain the rules.
So I sat at the table by myself. I won. The dealer was really excited for me, but I was pretty clueless. I had a straight flush. Then I just kept winning. People would take the seat in front of me, they would lose, I’d win. Didn’t matter. Got two more straight flushes that night and lots of other good hands. I kept betting the minimum, wish I was putting down more.
I turned $20 into 3k that night. My dad didn’t believe me.”
11. Thank you!
“I had an aunt that was basically excommunicated from my family for reasons that still are unclear to me, I was super young when the falling out happened (4 or 5)
She was married to some super old guy who was oil wealthy, and inherited his fortune when he passed. When I was 23 she passed, and crazily enough I was her favorite. She liked me, and in her letter left to me, I was the son she never had (I remember the way she used to play hide and seek with me but nothing else)
It makes me sad that she was kicked out of the family and she seemed to have really though a lot of young me.
She left me 2.4 million dollars. I’ve always in the back of my mind tried to make her proud of me, cause she was the cool hide and seek aunt I never really knew.”
12. Six figures.
“Not fast money. But, I lucked into get hired by an employee owned business. You earn 25% of your annual salary in stock.
I have six figures worth. I hope to afford a decent retirement.”
13. That’s a nice surprise.
“I cut my elder neighbors yard growing up and helped him with random things around the house.
He passed away while I was in college. Came home one weekend and I have a letter in the mail. It was from my old neighbors attorney advising me he left me his house, money and 2 cars. I was fairly close with the guy, but never knew he had no family at all.
Immediately sold the cars, I rent the house out, and I invested 50% of the money.”
14. Nice work!
“I built a motorcycle, back in 2011. Pretty well all the parts on it, I built. Took it to a few rallies, few shows. Made its way around the internet, some magazines. Had a ton of people ask if I sold this part, or that part. So, I started to.
Started in my garage. Sold right about 10,000 parts out of there over the span of two years. Bought a shop, more equipment, started automating my processes.
Friend that owns a business that supplies stuff to practically every nuclear plant in the world pops in one day, asks me to design a connector for a surveillance system they sell.
Took a day, had the prototype done. Cut out round about 20 minutes on each individual camera installation, and required no tools. They sold a fuck ton of those. Then jumped into radiation shielding. Big f’n money in that.
It’s been nearly ten years now. Sell thousands upon thousands of bike parts that I designed and build every year. Travel to motorcycle events all over. Generally have a blast. I’m 31, pretty well have the financial freedom to go do whatever I want.”
Now we want to hear from all the readers out there.
If you know someone who’s made a bunch of money in a random way, tell us all about it in the comments.
Thanks in advance!
