You’ve got Tom Nook literally on your doorstep (tentstep?) asking for Bells, your home needs to be decorated, and we both know that item you’re eyeing for your friend might not be in stock for a long time. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you’ll want to earn Bells as much as you did in any other game (if it’s your first, welcome!) and we’ve got several kinds of ways for you to make money fast in New Horizons.
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How to Get Bells Quickly in ACNH
This New Horizons money guide has a mix of ways to make money, along with a list of some of the biggest ticket items we’ve encountered so far. We've also added a section for the 2.0 Update as you'll need Bells to pay off shops at Harv's Island Plaza, and more.
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When you’re looking to pay off your first loan to Tom Nook, you’ll want to focus on earning Nook Miles rather than Bells, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do both at the same time. Many of the early Nook Miles challenges require you to simply play the game. Here are some activities we recommend doing in your first few days. This particular part is intended for new players who are unfamiliar with making Bells in Animal Crossing:
- Pull weeds, but not all of them - Farming weeds in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is lucrative early on if you don’t have a lot of time to sit around fishing. Leave a few big ones with dandelions so more weeds will grow around them. This brings us to…
- Sell crafted items; not resources - If you’re selling wood, weeds, or tree branches straight to Tommy, stop. You’ll likely earn 2x-3x as many Bells by crafting items in bulk and selling them. For example, weeds sell for 10 Bells each. Collect a bunch, craft them into the Leaf umbrella, and make 300 per umbrella! It's double what you'd make off the clump of 15 weeds required to craft the umbrella and it doesn't use any tools (which cost resources to make). It's an all-around net positive. You can earn Nook Miles by selling weeds, but we’d recommend leaving that for later once you’re past this starting period.
- Look for the lucky money rock - Once per day, one of the rocks on your island will drop Bells instead of other resources when struck. If struck eight times, you can get up to 16,400 Bells. Early on, there may be days where you can’t find it but that’s probably because it’s out of reach (across the river or on elevated terrain). Eventually, you’ll have the tools to explore your entire island.
- Listen and look for gifts in the sky - Once you have a slingshot, always try and shoot down balloon presents. They can give you anything from clothing to furniture, new fruit, DIY recipes, and anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 Bells. You’ll know a balloon is floating nearby when you hear a higher pitched wind sound. You may also see its shadow on the ground.
- Gifts from Mom - Mom will sometimes mail you non-native fruit. Don't sell it! Instead, plant them to create more fruittrees, then sell the fruit that drops for 500 a pop, and keep planting more to gain a constant income of Bells for fruit.
- Craft Fish Bait and Fish a lot - Generally, bugs won’t sell as much as fish so you’ll want to focus on fishing over bug catching. If you’re not overly concerned about your museum the first few days (and even if you are, you can get those museumfish out of your inventory by placing them in your tent or somewhere outdoors by choosing “Place Item”) try to fish as much as you can. You can summon fish in lakes or the ocean with Fish Bait, which you’ll learn to craft by digging up a manila clam on the beach. You can find a manila clam by looking for small, reappearing holes in beaches that have water periodically spitting out of them. If you can fish late at night, you’ll sometimes find some rare ocean fish that sell for 10k+ Bells.
- Save your free deserted island ticket - Tom Nook will give you a free Deserted Island trip ticket that’s valued at 2,000 Nook Miles - don’t use it yet. Wait until you’ve unlocked the expanded pocket space through the Pocket Organization Guide Nook Miles reward. It might be tempting to jump the gun, but you’ll want more space to carry as much back with you as you can!
- Plant a money tree - Once you dig up a bag of Bells from a glowing spot in the ground don't close the hole or spend the money! Instead, select and plant the bag of Bells you found to grow a money tree. Or, if you have more Bells saved, you can take up to 10k out of your pocket and plant that for a greater value money tree instead. To do this withdraw at least 10K from the bank. Then open your pockets with (X) and select your money (bells). Then select 10,000 Bells. This will make them an item in your pocket that you can plant (the same way you can plant fruit!).
- Shake trees with caution - You should be shaking every tree you have access to. You’ll often get a tree branch, 100 Bells, and even random furniture. Make sure you have a bug net in hand, though. You’ll sometimes shake out a wasp nest and they’ll attack you if you’re not prepared! Catching one is simple so long as you’re standing in front of the tree; as soon as your character gets over the shock, hit “A” immediately. That, or run indoors to evade the wasps. The wasp sells for a lot though, so try to catch them!
Keep up with these things and you should have a fair bit of money in no time while working on unlocking your first home upgrade. Be sure to visit our Nook Miles page if you’re specifically having trouble reaching the first 5,000 miles to see what’s easy for you to unlock. There are a few tasks you should be doing daily, too.
- Hot Items and the Drop-Off Box - Once you unlock Nook’s Cranny, check in to see Timmy and Tommy’s “hot item of the day.” The crafted item sells for double the normal price, but don’t put it in the drop-off box! The drop-off box only gives you 80% of the value for things you submit at night. Save your highest value items for when the store opens or you’ll be throwing away Bells.
- Managing inventory space smartly - Are you playing at night but don’t want to suffer losses from the drop-off box fees but need more inventory space to keep catching/digging? Make sure you store items you want to sell in your house by putting them in storage, displaying them in your home, or even displaying them right in front of Nook’s Cranny. No one will mind if you have a weird pile of things outside of the building. Just don’t forget to collect it all when you’re ready to sell.
- Keep digging - There aren’t any pitfalls or gyroids, so get those fossils dug up daily, assessed, then sell the duplicates! They go for a lot of money.
- How to get a money tree - Keep an eye out for the glowing spot on the ground. Instead of digging it up immediately, make sure you have 10K bells on you, pull it out of your total Bell count and into your inventory (you can do so by scrolling over to your Bell count, hitting A, and choosing how much you want to take out), dig up the 1K Bells from the glowing hole and bury the 10K Bells instead. You’ll have a far more bountiful money tree this way.
- Don’t sell all your new fruit - Whenever you receive fruit from a friend, your mom, or any other way, make sure you’re planting your first three of the fruit. Foreign fruit sell for 500 each, so growing an orchard of new fruit will eventually be a rather good way to make money. Coconuts sell for less, though.
- Bring a tree back with you - While you’re exploring a deserted island through Nook Miles, you might spot a new kind of fruit. Instead of just shaking the tree for fruit, eat a piece of fruit (either one you bring with you or from the island) and dig up the entire tree. Bring the tree back to your island and plant it! This is much faster than waiting for a tree with fruit to grow, and you can still plant the fruit already growing on the tree.
- Prioritize fishing over bug catching - There’s a far greater chance you’re going to fish up a high value fish over catching a high value bug, so when you’re grinding for money, don’t worry about bug catching too much.
- Put the work in when C.J. is in town - If you see C.J., strap in for a full day of fishing. After completing his challenge, this otter will buy your fish at a premium! Craft up a few fishing rods, empty your inventory, and go at it. You can see all known prices he buys for on the Fish page.
- Stay near the ocean while fishing - Every island layout differs, but we’ve found great success in fishing at night along the ocean. Walk all the beach, collect conch shells or other higher priced shells if you wish, and snag all the fish you come across.
- Saving can pay off - Don’t forget to save some Bells in the ABD! You’ll get a bit of interest every now and then for having money in your savings account.
As mentioned above, certain fish and bugs can bring in a lot of Bells. Below is a list of the most valuable known critters.
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If you want to really make the most of what you’re catching and don’t mind waiting, sell the fish to C.J. and the bugs to Flick when they’re in town. They pay a premium rate.
Fish that Sell for the Most Bells in ACNH
- Koi (rare, but obtainable!)
- Golden Trout (rare)
- Pike
- Cherry Salmon
- Bitterling
- Sea Butterfly
- Red Snapper
- Olive Flounder
- Football Fish
- Oarfish (rare)
- Coelacanth (rare)
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For prices for even more fish, please visit the Fish Critterpedia list. This list will be updated as we come across more high-selling fish.
Bugs that Sell for the Most Bells in ACNH
- Tarantula
- Orchid Mantis
- Wasp
- Hermit Crab
For more on Bug prices and image, visit the Bugs page. You've really gotta live your life on the edge to make money off them, huh?
You can use Time Travel to make a million bells fast and you won’t have to worry about weeds or villagers leaving. Your only real consequence is sometimes having to kill a few roaches in your home.
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The money you deposit into your ABD Savings account will gain interest over time. Like real-life, the longer you leave that money - in the bank, untouched; and the more money you have in the bank period - the more money you will gain! Fortunately, unlike real-life, this interest rate is actually pretty good!
Here’s how to get a million bells easily:
Use this exploit after getting access to the ABD Bank, available at the Nook Stop, and before you start trying to get more residents to your Island by building them furniture.
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- Forget about paying off the loan on your house for now.
- Put all your money into the bank. It can be a lot or just a few thousand bells. (Personally, we started this process with 45,000 Bells).
- Save and exit your game by pressing the (-) symbol and closing the software.
- Change your system clock to the year 2000. Month and date doesn’t matter but we liked keeping it the same to avoid extra variables.
- Start the game so that Tom Nook thinks it’s the year 2000. Read all your mail. (You may already have a letter from the bank saying there’s interest from doing this time jump BUT interest is never deposited into your bank for going back in time so don’t celebrate yet).
- Save and exit your game by pressing the (-) symbol and closing the software.
- Change your system clock to the year 2060.
- Start the game so that Tom Nook thinks you’re in 2060. Read all your mail. Note: Sometimes you will get 2 letters, each for 99,999 bells but you’ll notice only 99,9999 bells will actually be deposited into your account.
- The max amount of interest you can earn is 99,999
- Check your bank! We recommend checking your bank account each time you do this to make sure you’re doing it correctly!
- Depending on how much money you have in the bank, it may take a while to get the max interest and a while to find the minimum amount of years you need to jump in order to get the max interest. So experiment a bit with how much you’re changing your clock because jumping ahead repeatedly is easier than jumping back, then ahead, then back ahead.
- Once we had 900,000 Bells in our savings we only had to jump 2 years ahead to get that 99,999 bells interest.
- REMEMBER you only gain interest when you’re moving forward in time.
- Repeat this time jumping process until you get 1,000,00 Bells! Go for more if you’d like.
- You can likely do this later in the game too but you’ll risk weeds growing and Residents leaving. They may not leave immediately but could start leaving suddenly once you get back into your daily routine.
After you’ve unlocked Nook’s Cranny, you’ll start getting a visit from Daisy Mae every Sunday morning and leaves around noon. This relative of Joan sells turnips and they’re not for eating! Instead, you’ll treat these like stocks -- yeah, you read that right. It’s called the Sow Joan’s Stalk Market, to be exact.
Like in Animal Crossings before, these turnips go bad after a week, so after you invest, you have a whole week to sell them. Timmy and Tommy won’t buy them on Sunday, but they will any other day (you can’t sell them in the drop-off box, though.) Their prices change in the morning and the afternoon.
Daisy Mae sells turnips each week at a different price per turnip. Sometimes it's 97 Bells, sometimes it's 92 Bells. Regardless, you have to buy them in bundles of 10. If you want to play this game make sure you have a lot of Bells on you! Like stocks, this is an investment, and so long as you sell your turnips before they rot, you should make money back.
When you decide to sell is entirely up to you, but keep an eye out for higher rates.
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Turnip rates are usually at their highest on Tuesday, so try then! If the morning price isn't appealing, you should probably sell some during the afternoon price.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
- If you time travel to or past Sunday, your current turnips will spoil.
- Traveling back in time will automatically spoil your turnips. Even if you go back to the previous Sunday, buy more, and go back forward, the price on that day you came from will change.
- If you leave rotten turnips out, they'll attract ants.
- You can travel to other ACNH islands to get a different selling price from Timmy and Tommy. See if your friends get a better offer then take advantage of that!
- While buying turnips from Daisy Mae, you can hit a button in the top right of the number pad that says "Buy the Max" if you don't want to do the math of how many turnips you can afford. This takes your inventory space into account too, so if you only have one spot open, it'll only allow you to buy one bundle of turnips.
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New Ways to Make Money in Update 2.0
In Update 2.0, you're going to need Bells to unlock all the shops in Harv's Island Plaza. There are seven unlockable stores: Redd, Katrina, Tortimer, Reese and Cyrus, Leif, Kicks, and Saharah, and they all cost 100,000 each to unlock. That's not even considering the Bells you need to buy their services once you have them, either.
The update added some new ways to make Bells:
Kapp'n's Boat Tours
Once you've got a 3-Star Island Rating, Kapp'n will show up at your Dock and whisk you away to a randomly-generated mysterious island for 1,000 Nook Miles once per day. Here, you can gather different materials to sell such as fruit, bush starts, shells, vines, and more.
If you're lucky, you may even hit the jackpot and encounter a Money Tree island, giving you thousands of Bells within minutes. There are also Star Fragment islands, with Star Fragments washing up on the beach and bursting out when you hit rocks that you can pocket and sell once you get back to your island.
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Cooking and Harvesting
You can now grow vegetables and crops in ACNH. Leif sells various starts either when he comes to visit your island or at Harv's Island Plaza if you've unlocked his shop, which you can then plant and harvest.
After planting a crop, it takes four days to yield and because you're after Bells, make sure you water them every day as you'll receive more when you harvest them. After you've planted a start once and got the first harvest after four days, they'll grow again and only take two days to produce. For a full tutorial, check out our How to Get Vegetables and How to Get Wheat guides.
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You can sell any produce that you grow at Nook's Cranny, or you can cook with them at a Kitchen in your house. There are various recipes in the game, all of which require their own ingredients to create. For the full list, take a look at our Cooking Guide and Recipes page.
Donation Box
The Donation Box is a new item in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 Update. It can be placed outside on your island and is a way to let visitors gift you Bells.
It only lets you put in 1,000 Bells at a time, though, making bigger donations a bit of a pain, but it's a nice way to say thank you to a host for letting you visit them. You can withdraw from it at any time.
If you have a lot of visitors, it's a great way of accumulating some spare change without having to go out of your way to do anything other than unlocking it and placing it outside. Check out our How to get the Donation Box and How It Works wiki page for a guide on how to get your hands on it.
Looking for even more? Why not check out some of our other handy Animal Crossing: New Horizons guides.
