Most of us were taught from a young age that if we were patient and worked hard, our efforts would pay off. But growing up shows you that life isn’t fair, and you can actually work a grueling job for 40+ hours a week and still have trouble making ends meet. So if you’re looking to take some shortcuts, there might be a way you can earn a little extra cash on the side without putting in too much effort.
Users on Quora and Reddit have recently been discussing some of the easiest and fastest money they’ve ever made, so we’ve gathered their replies below. Some of these are very creative side hustles, while others just involved being in the right place at the right time. So enjoy reading through these stories, and keep reading to find a conversation with personal finance expert and creator of Making Sense of Cents, Michelle Schroeder-Gardner!
#1
I get paid $50/day to stay in a 15000 square foot fully furnished house on 18 acres in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the US. My duties are 1) turn on alarm when I leave and at night, and 2) feed koi fish. I have the entire property to myself except the 5 days a year when the owners pop by to visit or grab some stuff. This has been happening for the last 5 years.
Image source: anon, RDNE Stock project
#2
Went to a casino with the family. Dad handed me 20 bucks for gambling. Did not gamble, made 20 bucks.
Image source: flyingviolin, Darya Sannikova
#3
Got an email from a Nigerian prince. Money should be here any day now…
Image source: PoopySnuggles, Andrea Piacquadio
#4
Breaking up with my ex. Saved so much money it felt like I had gotten a raise.
Image source: Owtlaw1, RDNE Stock project
#5
I signed up to do extra work for a very s****y but major-studio film while I was in college; it was filming near my campus. For whatever reason, the director liked me and asked if I would be OK with speaking one or two lines to the main character (a famous actress). I said sure. Because I had to spend all day on the set and go to costuming and makeup, I was offered a SAG voucher (I’m not sure if it works that way anymore?) and was paid union rates. Instead of $100, I made a little under $2,000.
Image source: comababy, Lê Minh
#6
$40 to *fix* the sound on my uncle’s computer. Just needed to be unmuted.
Edit: Tried to tell him just needed to be unmuted. Wouldn’t have any of that and had me come over to “Just do it”. He also refused my refusal of the money.
Image source: kpraslowicz, Tima Miroshnichenko
#7
Picked up a broken clothes dryer off of craigslist for free. Heating element was broken. Crimped the wires back together, sold it on Craigslist for $80.
That’s not the best part, though. I delivered it to this chick’s house, hauled it downstairs for her and hauled off her broken one cause I’m a nice guy, she tipped me $20. Spend $15 on parts to repair that dryer, sold dryer a few days later to a guy who gave me two old washers and a dryer AND $80.
Now my garage is full of f*****g appliances and I’ve got people constantly wanting to give me broken appliances or buy working ones from me, and I can’t keep up. All I wanted was some beer money… :(.
Image source: Cyfun06, Quang Nguyen Vinh
#8
I once worked security at a Hillary Duff concert. Once I got my hands on a set of earplugs, that was some d**n easy money. Just had to stand there and look mildly annoyed.That’s basically my face all the time anyway.
Image source: PatchRat
#9
Waited in line for iPhone 4 for 12 hours. Sold spot to someone for $500 cash. My SO was still in line and used cash to buy us phones.
Image source: lolturtle, chumsdock
#10
All I had to do was be born, and people STILL give me money every year for it.
Suckers. My mom was the one who did all the work anyway.
Image source: godlovesaliar, Cj
#11
In junior high I sold 7 Beanie Babies for $950.
Image source: randomfactaholic, Dominique Godbout
#12
I once sold my drunk friend two pieces of his own toast for ten dollars.
Image source: suuupbrah, Junior REIS
#13
Drove my cousin to and from college.
He couldnt drive yet, and my uncle was like take him and pick him up, a cab was 60 so for an entire semester 4 times a week, 50 bucks a day. So great.
Image source: ImAjustin, Alex P
#14
After a night of drinking me and a buddy stopped at a place and got pizza, we ordered an entire pie although we really didn’t need all of it. We got over there probably 30 minutes before all the bars closed to beat the rush of drunks. Well when the bars did actually let out, we were still sitting there eating. Since we had a bunch of slices left and we sitting by the door where a line was forming, I pushed a slice out onto the top part of the box and said watch this. Immediately I was offered $5 for the slice by some guy who didn’t want to wait in line. Kept doing that for the rest of the pizza, sold the whole thing pretty quickly, paid for the entire pizza and probably ended up with an extra $5-10 for each of us to keep. I doubt the owners would have been happy to know we were reselling their own pizza inside their shop for a profit.
Image source: unclexbenny, Polina Tankilevitch
#15
I was taking an online Intro to Programming class (Java) for easy marks in high school. A few other friends were in it, one of them didn’t really do many of the assignments. About a week before the final project was due (Nothing too complicated, one of the options was a simple game using some of the things we learned).
He said he’d pay me $300 to do the assignment for him and I thought he was joking. So I threw together a nice little Ottawa Senators trivia game and made the GUI pretty using the team colours and logos. This took about 3 hours including lunch.
I send him the project files and what do you know, he shows up the next day and hands me $300.
Image source: anon, Christina Morillo
#16
~$700 for taking a big a*s piece of aluminum to the scrap yard. A neighbor was using it as a retaining wall, tore it out, and said I could have it. I think it was part of a bridge.
Image source: SoCoGrowBro, Calvin _Cowakces
#17
A friend of mine needed to give a presentation to clients in India, and wanted me to translate the text matter into Hindi. His company was going to go to a professional agency for it anyway, and he figured he could save money by asking me to do it for a smaller fee.
So I did it. For like 150EUR, 10EUR per slide. Took me about 2 hours in all.
What’s funny is that he didn’t need to do this at all. The presentation was in English. All his clients in India would understand English perfectly.
Whatever, corporates.
Image source: nishantjn, RDNE Stock project
#18
Bought some Bitcoins a few years back before they gained their current momentum. It was just after a crash at the time, so in hindsight they were at a “good” price, although I was unaware of this.
Anyways I had completely forgot about them until I read about the bitcoin market crashing again, around April of this year. I thought “Oh well, there goes my money”. I checked to see how worthless they were only to find out they roughly were, and still are, worth about 40-fold what I paid for them!
Image source: kernelmusterd, Artem Podrez
#19
In 2012 when hurrican Sandy hit NY I just so happened to arrive on the day of the hurricane. Was totally stranded without power or water in the East Village. NExt day I got a zipcar to charge my phone. Driving around I saw tons of people who needed rides and being me, I stopped and picked up a person. Then I stopped to pick up 2 oldies, and they immediately ask “how much?” “Ten bucks,” I told them.
2 hours later I had driven from the East Village to Upper EAst like 4 or 5 times, and made about $300.
Image source: tzachg, Alex Barnes
#20
Found $40 on the ground. picking it up: 5 seconds tops.
Hourly wage at that rate: $28,800/hour
Yearly Salary at that rate: $57,600,000.
Image source: lightstuffonfire, Markus Spiske
#21
Won an eating competition, 1000 bucks in 2 min.
Also found out what Churros taste like, so win/win.
Image source: Walletau, Sarah Stierch
#22
Bought a home befote a housing boom. $120, 000 profit in 1 year from selling 1 house.
Image source: Rachellybean, Getty Images
#23
Working as a bank teller. Someone brought in $86 in silver half dollars. All pre-1964 some were pre whatever date was needed so that they were 90% silver. Sold them on Craigslist within the week for $1850. For anybody that is wondering, I did attempt to convince the customer not to deposit them. The customer insisted that they had no value.
Image source: dadsapilot, Jimmy Chan
#24
Being on Mad TV. Got paid over $500 just for “performing” for a few hours (I was part of a fake band they used in a sketch), and when it aired, I received a $400 royalty check. I received about 10 more checks after that, totaling another $400. Never got to see that kind of easy money again tho :( …
#25
Easiest/wierdest money I made was when I was backpacking around the country, and one day this Asian guy in a Porsche pulls up in front of the hostel and asks if I wanted to earn some money. For 2 weeks I got paid $100 each day to be driven around in a Porsche, and I would get given a phone and a list of phone numbers to call and figures that I had to read out to each phone number.
He said he was a real estate agent but that some of his clients didn’t like to be spoken to by someone with an asian accent, which I went along with because it was easy money ($100 for 30-40 minutes work), but I’m 99% sure it was gambling figures.
Image source: dangermouse2, Getty Images
#26
Cleaning some pool furniture. About a half hour of work for 60$ was great at 16.
Image source: OrSomethin, Oshomah Abubakar
#27
I get payed to sit here and look at reddit… so I guess I got that going for me..
Image source: hitdathoe, Mikhail Nilov
#28
I set up a Wii for my mom’s friend’s kid. $20 to plug in the cord to the tv and turn it on.
Image source: KickItNext, Markus Spiske
#29
Got paid to go learn how to speak French in France.
Image source: sugarminttwist, K2 Production
#30
Sold my car to some bald guy with a beard wandering the desert.
Image source: Indydegrees2, cottonbro studio
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