25 Unexpected Ways People Got a Windfall of Cash

‘A paper bag stuffed with money’
25 Unexpected Ways People Got a Windfall of Cash

While most of us fantasize about slipping and falling in a Walmart or getting hit just hard enough by a rich reckless driver, other people have happened upon large amounts of money without any personal harm necessary. Before you try to argue that $100 isn’t a true windfall, please remember the fact that two bags of groceries, regardless of the contents, is a guaranteed total of like $80. 

From finding abandoned money in the ATM tray to winning bingoRedditors have recalled the times they came into money for nothing. And if something like this has never happened to you, be patient. One Redditor’s parents actually won the Reader’s Digest sweepstakes, so anything is possible. 

canadian_air. 3y When Google first came out, I thought it was far and away superior to the search engines of their time. Much more efficient interface. When their IPO came out, I got some. ... 1.6k
t073 . 3y 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 years 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.
xaraca . 3y I used to play minesweeper a lot. Some website showed up where you could play in little tournaments. I started with $20 and made over $1000.
 . 3y I took out $100 from an ATM and five bills came out. Four 20s and a hundred. Receipt showed $100 withdrawn. ... 44
CyberPunkette . 3y My grandma decided to try a slot machine once as a joke and won $300 first try ... 4.7k
rhinofeet . 3 3y I made a reaction GIF and posted it on Imgur/GFYCat, I got a message randomly months later asking if I had made it because they wanted to license it. It ended up being used in a NIKE commercial & they paid me pretty handsomely for something I did on a whim. ... 95
Confused3366 . 3y 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. Not sure if this counts but that's my story. ... 13.4k
ZarquonsFlatTire . . 3y Went to the ATM for weed money and there was $160 sitting in the dispenser tray. ... 193
REEEeeEEEEtheteasis . 3y not me but my 14 Yr old cousin made an abstract art peice that took him 2mins max and as a joke put it on ebay for 5k. he sold it. idk if he was telling the truth but he did give me £200 for my bday (he normally gives around £20) so it seems likely
frivus . 3y 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.. ... 18k
MysticKrewe 3y 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. Не 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
blink2356 3y My Great-Aunt and godmother was a lesbian. Her partner - my Auntie Kitty - had been with her since the 1950's, when my godmother moved to New York City to work for as a magazine photographer. Auntie Kitty was disowned by her family when it came out she was with a woman. My godmother died when I was 12 and left my Auntie Kitty everything in her will, which made things strained with my dad's family, though my dad and one of his brothers still talked to her. I moved to New York at 18 for school and, knowing no one
AHOY zaise_chsa . 3y 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. Payed for the trip and a bit left over. I haven't been to a casino since but I doubt
FastWalkingShortGuy 3y Parents died when I was in my 20s and I inherited a small buttload of money. The real kicker was the house I grew up in. It was a 3 bedroom single family with an attached business in Boston. I was an absentee landlord for a while from another state but decided it was too much of a pain in the ass, so I sold it. Look up what a three bedroom house goes for in Boston. ... 735
 . 3y I found 3600 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 Dollers from a drug dealer on accident ... 7k
uoYredruM 3y I briefly worked with a guy who was in his late 20s, ex military. When he got out, a friend of his he served with told him to buy Bitcoin. Не bought several thousand worth when it was nothing and forgot about it. When it first started spiking and getting attention on the news, he started looking for the drive because he thought he had some. Не did and he had a lot of it. Sold well before the peak. Dude made millions. Не had an $800,000 house, multiple high end cars and came to work a manual
dwmeds 3y 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
Zuliman 3y 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 byJean-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
TomBergerr 3y 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
Elegant-Pressure-290 .7 76d A guy I went to high school with won the lottery in his early thirties. Не bought the low-income housing block he grew up in and his mother still lived in, completely renovated it, and kept it low income housing. I don't know what else he did with the money, but he changed a lot of families' lives for the better with that one purchase. ... Reply 7.9k
Wyrdeone Зу I was 10 years old. Me and my two friends found a paper bag in a shopping cart outside the local Grocery. It was stuffed with money. We counted it and it was just over 600 dollars. We split it three ways and went home. One of my friends later crumbled under the pressure and told their moms who told our moms. We had to return it. I only spent like 10 bucks... Turns out it belonged to one of the suppliers to the grocery who accidentally left it in his cart on the way out. Not a
drewbiez . 3y I loaned a friend 12k to buy inventory to sell flee and tick meds for pets online in the early 2000s. Не did really well and went on to make tons of money doing it. Не paid me back in like 6 months and sent me checks for 1k a month as a thank you for going on 15 years now.... I made Him stop recently because I don't need it, its a pain to account for on my taxes and he's paid me like 10x back for the loan lol. ... 131
dirkdastardly 76d My parents won the Readers Digest sweepstakes. (Yes, people really win those; no, they didn't have to buy anything.) It paid out $5 million over 30 years, or roughly $170K per year. So not buy a private island money, but more than my parents had ever seen. They retired early, bought a modest house in their hometown near their family, and started doing the things they'd always wanted to do. They traveled the world, ate at good restaurants, drank nice wine. When grandkids came along, they could afford to visit four or five times a year. The money
DimitriV 3y I had a coworker who had bought a new car, and within a week somebody crashed into him and the car was totaled. Не ended up getting a little more from their insurance than he'd paid for the car, and moved on. A year later, he got a letter from the other guy's insurance company saying that they had audited their books and found that they owed him money. They sent him a check for $16,000 to pay for the damage to the car they had already totaled. ... 827
Br1nkley . 3y The summer after my freshmen year in college I was walking my little 20lb dog on a street near my house. A neighbor lady was walking her two dogs who were a husky and some other similar sized dog. The husky attacked my dog and in the process I got some teeth marks on my wrist. Since the neighbors dog started it and the owner obviously couldn't control it I wanted them to pay the vet fees for my dog which was under 500. The guy ended up being a dick about it and my roommates dad

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