Best Ways to Make Money in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

There are many different ways to make money in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. If you really want to maximize your profits, follow our tips and tricks guide for the best ways to make a ton of Bells.

Catching Insects and Fish

The easiest and perhaps most obvious way to make some nice Bells are to catch and sell insects and fish. Bug catching and fishing are both fairly straightforward, but we have some tips that might help you out.

If you run out of pocket space and can’t make it over to the store quickly, you should drop any bugs or fish that aren’t worth much.

Sea Bass, Dabs, and Horse Mackerels are all low-value fish if you are ocean fishing. Instead, fill your pockets with Barred Knifejaws and Red Snappers for maximum profits. If you are having a tough time catching fish, dig up Manilla Clams on the beach and turn them into fish bait!

As far as insects go, fill your pockets with Emperor Butterflies, Peacock Butterflies, Tarantulas, and Tiger Beetles. These insects are not available year-round, so be sure to keep an eye out for high-value fish and insects when you go to sell them.

When you go to sell your insects and fish, look out for two people in particular. Flick and CJ will buy your fish and insects from you for 50% more than the others. Both these vendors seem pretty rare, though.

Money Rocks

One rock will continuously spawn money every time you hit it. You must hit it eight times in a row quickly to maximize your bells. Your characters get knocked back a bit each time you hit the rock, so you can dig holes behind you to prevent yourself from having to readjust. The most you can get out of the rock is 16,100 bells.

Exploring Islands

For 2000 Nook Miles you can visit an unexplored island. This can be beneficial for many reasons, but this guide is about making money so we’ll go over the best money-making opportunities. The first thing is that these islands have a high spawn rate for rare insects and fish.

The best reason to explore islands is that you can find rare islands, such as the island covered in money rocks or islands covered in tarantulas. Be sure to empty your pockets before you go out to explore the islands because you never know how much space you might need.

Lastly, while exploring new islands and visiting friends you have a good chance to find some non-native fruit that will sell for about 500 Bells each. Instead of selling the fruit, you can plant them to sell a lot more fruit more consistently.

Money Trees

Since we just talked about planting fruit to grow non-native fruit trees, we should talk about money trees. You can bury money in glowing dirt locations to grow Money Trees. Dig up the glowing area of dirt, and bury the sack of Bells you find in there.

The money tree that grows in the location will produce bags of money once for you to harvest. You should get anywhere between 20,000 to 40,000 Bells from this.

Stalk Market

Every Monday, Daisy Mae will come to your island and sell you turnips at a different price. You want to buy turnips from her and sell them to Timmy and Tommy later in the week for a higher value. Turnips go bad after a week, so you need to find the day that Timmy and Tommy want to buy your turnips for a good price to unload them.

Hot Items

When Nook’s Cranny opens, Timmy and Tommy will be looking for a high-value “hot item” of the day. This is essentially a random item that you will be able to sell to the Nooklings for double the value. If you have a lot of materials, you can likely craft the hot item multiple times and make some good money by selling them.

You will want to take into account how much it cost you to craft the hot item versus how much they are willing to pay. If it turns out you made a good chunk of change, it might be time to mass produce! Sometimes, it turns out that you will lose money on the trade.