16 people who made a lot of money by 'sheer randomness' share their stories.

While it's best to avoid shady 'get rich quick' schemes and 'hey girly I just found an amazing gig selling leggings from home' MLMs, stumbling into a lucrative opportunity with the power of luck does occasionally happen...

Whether it was a lucky slot machine, a surprisingly good job, or a random inheritance--money can come out of nowhere. So, when a Reddit user asked, 'Redditors who made a lot of money by sheer randomness, what's your story?' people were ready to share their story of magical money moves.

1.

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. - frivus

2.

My friend's father was gifted an oil pencil drawing in the late 70s. His family always assumed it was pretty much worthless and I always joked that it looked like my friend had drawn it as a child. This stilly angry stick figure drawing ended up being an unsigned piece of art by Jean-Michel Basquiat.

His family did some digging and eventually had it authenticated by the JMB estate before selling it at Christie's auction house for an amazing sum of money.

I was absolutely blown away when I learned this. My friend and his family were far from wealthy so to realize they had this unknown treasure just sitting out in the living room for so many years was mind blowing. - Zuliman

3.

I was looking for a new friend online, got a sugar daddy...he just mails me a check once ever three months of a few thousand after he heard I was possibly gonna have to put my cat down cause I couldn't afford the surgery.

I send him pictures of my cat as a thank you and to let him know I got the check (don't cash them though, I feel weird doing it... Did cash the first one to save my cat) - kandaisdabest

4.

I got into a car accident on my way home from dropping my son off to his mom. I'm grateful that that's when it happened, and not while he was in the car. Dude in a company truck blew a stop sign and creamed the sh*t out of me, breaking my arm, and giving me a concussion. Well, a few months later, after I had almost entirely healed, I got a fat a*s check for 70 grand. - real_donald_pump

5.

Back in the mid 1990s when I lived in NYC, the musical Rent was really popular but they hadn't yet published the sheet music for it. I got hired by this dude who wanted to put on a performance of rent, he had a bootleg cassette of the show and offered to pay me $50 per song to create lead sheets.

I have a really strong ear so it was not time consuming. It wasn't a LOT of money, but for a struggling college student it was great, and was definitely the most random way I ever made money. - Plug_5

6.

Forgot I had 11 something bitcoins from back in the day leftover from buying “pizza”. Tried to set up a new account to invest in bitcoin since I’d used it before and saw I already had an account. Logged in and WOW!! Sold it all and made like $7k. Imagine the feeling knowing it would eventually reach $20k per coin. - Pmmeyourvacation

7.

I had $25 free slot play at the casino, and hit a 10k jackpot - peepscene

8.

I was a male escort for about 7ish years. I would go with people (usually women, but sometimes men.) And would pretend to be their perfect boyfriend/partner in front of friends and family/co-workers. It started out very much as an accident but ended up making me a ton of money.

I recently 'retired' and started focusing on going to school cause I can't do escorting my whole life, and nor did I want because I really dislike people and it was honestly a chore. Most of my clients were '1% percenters' which is the reason I made so much money. I did pay taxes on it before anyone asks. - Human_Distribution38

9.

i started live streaming on twitch a few years back when I was 15. i unexpectedly blew up really quickly and amassed a following in only about 2 months of streaming. i made over $2000, which was a lot for a 15 year old.... - Grantfordlee

10.

Playing blackjack while drunk in Reno. I had $300 to waste at the $5 table got lots of free watered down drinks while I was playing so I wasn’t paying attention. I have a rule, two piles, one of cash I can waste and another of money I won.

I was there for about three hours before I realized I wasn’t out of betting money and the dealer had changed four times. Won $4k at that table. Paid for the trip and a bit left over. I haven’t been to a casino since but I doubt I’d have that kind of luck again. - zaise_chsa

11.

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 260k for the whole fiasco. - Confused3366

12.

I found 3600 dollars in a food takeout box in the middle of a giant field - [deleted]

13.

I was gifted a brand new $1200 laptop for free once, just because I posted about needing a new one on a forum. - ilikeyourchords

14.

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. - dwmeds

15.

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. - MysticKrewe

16.

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. - t073