- - 65 Times People Became Rich Out Of Nowhere

Jonas GrinevičiusDecember 30, 2025 at 5:24 AM

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While it’s probably safe to say that most people want to be rich, attaining wealth is far from easy. And yet, with perseverance, creativity, insight, and a whole lot of luck, it’s definitely possible. But you have to be willing to think outside the box and take risks.

Internet users took to an intriguing AskReddit thread to reveal the most unexpected, bizarre ways that people they know became wealthy, and it’s a real eye-opener about what’s possible. We’ve collected their most intriguing posts to share with you, and you can check them out below.

#1

Friend trademarked a name and bought a domain for their small business. A major sneaker company developed a shoe with the same name and bought all his IP for a substantial sum (he didn’t disclose exact amount). My friend took some of that money and invested in his brother-in-law’s business. It was some kind of management software for industrial marine commerce. My friend made millions. He is an average guy, not particularly ambitious or intelligent or business savvy. Just a good guy with good luck.

© Photo: JetPlane_88

#2

Quiet chap I worked with, unassuming and never talked much except about football and his team. I was having a coffee with him and he said he had a letter from a solicitor and was going to see them later.Some time later he discovered that he had inherited 5000 acres and a building site development which already had 6 houses nearly complete with another 6 being built. The estate was worth millions and continues to deliver.He bought me a beer.

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#3

Had a distant family member who worked at a gas station Cafe, had an old grumpy man who used to come in and have his coffee every day, and nobody liked him. She went out of her way to be friendly and ask him how his day was, would sit and chat with him when it wasn't busy (They lived rurally so sometimes there was nobody coming in for a long time). One day he passed, and she learned she was to inherit his money, which was hundreds of thousands of dollars. He had no family, and had appreciated her kindness, so he left her everything. She used the money to build a house and purchase a construction company.

© Photo: No-Tumbleweed-2709

Being smart is far from the only (or even most important) quality necessary to attain wealth.

As reported by Bloomberg, both luck and one’s personality play key roles in success.

Based on research by economist James Heckman, a person’s IQ has only a tiny effect on financial success. Instead, your success in this area is more closely correlated with conscientiousness, which includes things like diligence, perseverance, and self-discipline.

#4

My mom’s friend’s daughter became a millionaire overnight in a weird way. The girl’s dad walked out on her family when she was in kindergarten, she did not have a relationship with him and he didn’t pay child support or visit or any of what a father should do. he just left and the mom really had to struggle to make ends meet for years. When the girl was finishing high school, the dad got hit and by a FedEx Truck and she was left with a million dollar settlement.

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#5

One of their old songs that they made more than a decade ago suddenly became popular on TikTok. Went from living on the bare minimum with roommates to start having to ask around for how to invest money.

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#6

A quiet coworker bought Bitcoin as a joke in college and cashed out years later for six figures.

© Photo: Creepy_Particular319

Furthermore, economist Heckman notes that, even though IQ still matters, you need more skills to break into the job market than what you’ll find just in intelligence tests. How you behave in job interviews, how you dress, how courteous you are, whether or not you’re late, and whether you do more than the minimum… all of these things matter.

Broadly speaking, diligence and motivation can lead to better results than intelligence and laziness. Meanwhile, you want to avoid being so introverted that you can’t speak up, or so extroverted that you can’t stay quiet and listen to others.

#7

I knew a kid in high school that was in on the beer can collecting trend. He entered an abandoned house and found ten of the rarest cans in the world. There were only like five of this brand in the entire nation so he had to sell them slowly so as not to tank the value. I believe he made around $800,000 in 1978 at the age of 16.

© Photo: Historical_Wear4558

#8

My ex’s mom and stepdad started taking care of this elderly couple on their street—taking them meals, doing things around the house, taking them to doctor’s appointments, etc. Eventually, the couple passed away. My ex’s mom and stepdad got a call from an attorney a little while after letting them know that the couple had left everything to them. They didn’t think much of it because they were poor and lived in a small house in a poor neighborhood, just as the elderly couple did. The elderly couple didn’t have anything nice—old, beat-up cars, small house, didn’t go on any expensive vacations or anything. They lived basically right above poverty level. Then the lawyer told them the couple had left them tens of millions of dollars…Don’t know the exact sum, but that’s what they told us, tens of millions.They live a very different life now.

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#9

Not wealthy, but a few years ago, Ring doorbell had a contest of who could film the best halloween video on their ring camera. My friend and her husband spent all weekend filming one just for fun and submitted it. They ended up winning the whole national contest and $100k of prize money.Couldn't have happened to a better couple either. Theyre two of the nicest people you'll ever meet. Neither works in a terribly high paying field, so the money allowed them to buy a nice, modest house in a good neighborhood near downtown. We were all very happy for them.

© Photo: Every-Incident7659

Do you personally know anyone who is incredibly well-off, dear Pandas? How did they make their fortune? What personality qualities and habits do you personally believe are the most important when it comes to sustainably building generational wealth? How big a role would you say that luck plays in getting rich?

We’d like to hear your thoughts, so feel free to share them in the comments down below.

#10

One of the richest guys I know in the city I grew up in. His idea was buying Hershey bars in bulk and re-wrapping them for weddings, retirement parties, and corporate events.That’s it. Buy the bars, print novelty labels, re-wrap them. Profit. He made tens of millions.

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#11

Dude I know had a small printing business. Covid hit and the government threw millions at sign printing. He landed one of the contracts. Silly time that was. He’s playing golf everyday now.

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#12

This girl I used to date and she posted a pic. Some random guy commented on it and said something like “she’s beautiful, but if she were light-skinned, she’d look better.” She was offered to come onto the local news to talk about it and started to receive tons of modeling contracts, sponsors, etc. Idk if she’s wealthy, but her income increased drastically; it was definitely unexpected. All she does is travel now.

© Photo: drewwwbabyy

#13

I have a friend who is an autistic loner type who never showed any entrepreneurial traits, he just worked in a large company as a regular engineer. At work, he befriended a manager, an older guy, an old-school, obnoxious type with no education, who got everything through connections, made a lot of money, and wanted to start his own business. The guy was looking for a business partner who would complement his boldness and charisma with professional knowledge and education, and he chose my friend who had the skillset but also was young, broke and unexperienced, so he wasn’t a danger for the guy. They created a synergistic "doer and thinker" duo, like in cartoons, love-hate relationship vibe but have been making millions running their own company for several years now.

© Photo: Gowno_starego

#14

Taught their dog to bark the Toyota theme song. She got to do the commercial where you hear the dog bark the jingle... they paid her heaps.

© Photo: Fun_Quit_312

#15

I worked at Microsoft on this project called "the hololens." It was a fun project but after ten years, the price was still too high and the headset was still too bulky, and Microsoft wanted to concede the consumer hardware market to Apple and others, so it all got canceled.My job was to make games for the hololens in a tiny studio within Microsoft called "LXP." When the studio was dissolved, the lead of the studio left to create a startup and invited me to join."What's the project" I asked?"I don't know yet" he said. "Well figure it out together."Seven other guys said yes to this. They had savings or wives that made money anyway. I didn't have that. I said no.They called the company "Against Gravity" since the hololens prototype was called "Grav A," which I thought was funny. A year later, I saw they were making a VR chat app that they were just giving away for free. I felt good about my decision to pass on bring the eighth member of this studio. The art looked like dev placeholder art.A few years after that, my old PM Nick's voice was coming through my radio on the way to work. He was the guest on NPR's "Planet Money." He was there to talk about how the little startup was now worth over 3 billion dollars. Apparently they had put the VR app ("Rec Room") on mobile and it was considered a Roblox competitor. So they did indeed figure it out together...

© Photo: GregBahm

#16

The guy who invented Smartfood (popcorn) lives in my town and we have some mutual friends. The "unexpected" part of his story is that popcorn wasn't what he was originally marketing. He had come up with an idea for a resealable chip bag. When he was pitching his product to investors he made some popcorn to put in the bags to show how the bags worked. The company hated the bag concept. Why would they want to prevent chips from going stale? That would cut into the sales of more chips. But they loved his popcorn! A blend of popcorn and parmesan cheese. PepsiCo now owns Smartfood and he's worth millions. .

#17

My uncle invented micro machines. Little toy cars in the early 90’s.

#18

Heard from other coworkers that a former coworker laid off around a year prior had won first place in a World Series of Poker event in Las Vegas with $1,500 buy in, about 1300 participants, and $315k first place prize. Not crazy money and not a main event or anything but very impressive nonetheless.I look him up from time to time on the WSOP website, and it looks like he goes to Vegas every few months to compete in several events, placing well enough to probably pay for his trips and take home a few $k but not quit his job. Nothing near as impressive as that first win.

#19

I read about a random guy (Spain I think) who saw that a funeral was going ahead without any mourners, so he stayed to pay respects. Then inherited the whole estate because the deceased was a curmudgeonly loner with a sense of humour, who bequeathed his estate equally among the mourners.

#20

My cousin was the great grandson of a man who started a funeral service company in a medium sized costal city. His Grandfather got dementia, and his father passed unexpectedly in his 50’s. My cousin was only 27. He was sort of a dumb head, and didn’t demonstrate the business acumen to take over the company, so the grandma had to buy him out. His share came out to 4 million.

#21

Kid that lived down the street from me growing up tried to get me to invest in buying domain names for established businesses that hadnt got in on the internet train yet with our paper delivery money (mid 90s). I declined because I wanted to spend my money on dumb stuff. I don't know how much he made from those but it was significant enough to sequentially create several startups in web hosting and eventually cloud storage. Each company he started he sold for more and more money. Now he is worth over $300M per google search.

#22

A guy at my church invested $30,000 in crypto and turned it into $3 million. He retired after that. (He was around 45 years old and already had money saved).

#23

Guy I knew in college got hit by a truck as a child. He was pretty seriously injured but eventually made a full recovery. He never said exactly how much he was awarded from the settlement, but he said it was enough that he would never have to work a day in his life. He said he was just going to college for fun.

#24

Family friend made 50m plus being the importer and distribution of the plastic VHS tape box that all rental places used.

#25

They only had 1 dollar left so they decided to buy a scratch ticket, they won 2 dollars so they bought another one and won 5 dollars, they decided to buy another one and won 20 dollars, they decided to buy one more and won 10,000. I was just standing there in stunned disbelief watching the whole thing thinking they were an idiot for wasting their last dollar until they won.

#26

The father of a kid I grew up with invested in a little musical called Grease.

#27

I have a friend who was really into beer, travelled all over the world going to breweries. Ended up being an importer at the height of the craft beer boom and has been massively successful. Never struck me as a "business" kind of guy, but is passionate about his work and is really friendly and fun. He was able to turn his hobby into a very lucrative career and as I understand it at this point his business almost runs itself. I have to admit I'm a little envious but I also find it hugely inspiring!

#28

My uncle won $250k on the TV show Who Wants to be a Millionaire back in the day. He also won a Harley Davidson motorcycle and a Chevy Cobalt from a raffle event. Luckiest man I've ever met.

#29

Years ago, my dad’s cousin (and all the farmers in the area) lost their cotton crops to unseasonable rain. The other farmers took their insurance payouts and gave up on the season. My dad’s cousin, against better advice, decided to do a second planting. There was just enough growing season left, and all the conditions lined up right just right, so he got a hell of a cotton crop out of it. Being the only farmer in the area with a significant crop that year, he was able to sell at a much higher price. He leveraged his profits to buy the cotton gin the following year. And he used those profits to buy more land/farms. And he’s bought/invested in a number of other things. For a fella who started as a small time cotton farmer in the 1970s, he is living a very cushy retirement.

#30

I know a guy who, around 2010, made an emulator app and made millions. He was like 25 years old. Little socially awkward and always trying to buy stuff to get people to like him. Some friends felt bad for the guy and so we kept inviting him to things and then try to tell him he didn't have to buy stuff. He was very generous and unfortunately some people took advantage of that.

#31

My cousin co-own a factory manufacturing personal protective equipment (PPE) through a joint venture with several businessmen in China.Our family are Asians. Not Chinese. When he told the family he has an investment opportunity to invest in China with several good friends with around 100k USD, many of us in the family thought it was a bad idea since we have very little idea how a foreigner owning a business in China is like. But we do know there are a lot of obstacles and generally a bad idea from conversations with people who own businesses in China.The factory eventually lost so much money and the other co-owners exited the partnership leaving him as the sole owner of the business and a lot of debts. (8 figures)Then covid happened... His factory became very profitable literally overnight. Face masks were especially profitable as they became significantly more expensive at the beginning of the pandemic due to a massive surge and his factory was producing and exporting close to a billion masks in the first year. That is not including the other PPE his factory is producing.He had since sold the factory and is living a very comfortable lifestyle.

#32

Pre online Ticketmaster: met a 16 year old who was savvy enough to be a form of Ticketmaster online. He had his own ticket selling place online. At 16 he was a multi millionaire.

#33

Family friend has a bunch of land in Central Louisiana, passed on from her grandfather. Turns out they stumbled across oil in the back portion of the property. Since they own the mineral rights, they get mailbox money and are beyond wealthy. They live a normal life (nothing flashy) so you would never suspect anything. Very kind and generous people.

#34

A cousin started giving music lessons online. Made so much money he didn’t know what to do with it all. So, he started buying small apartment buildings. Now he runs a substantial business with a series of properties that have 6 or fewer units each. (He loves Chicago three-flats.).

#35

I know a dude who won 60 grand in the lottery Not crazy money by any means but still, he lucked out big time, teaches the 2nd grade so 60k is a LOTPlus he’s an awesome dude I’m happy for him.

#36

My best friend from high school grew up poor as dirt. When his brother got married he had a hook up with a bridesmaid that he met at the wedding that turned into a long distance relationship. Turned out he had knocked her up the night of the wedding. Her family was extremely traditional so she wanted to get married. He agreed mostly because he wanted to be near his child. She moved to where we live and they got married. Her father owns a massive company in the northeast. After a year or so he missed his daughter enough to offer to buy them a house, pay all their moving expenses and give my friend a job with his company. For the last twenty years my friend has had a job where he does pretty much nothing, gets paid a ton, and has no debt at all. They have two sons now and actually have a very happy marriage.

#37

2 of my best friends randomly married girls who are obscenely wealthy (to me). One girls father invented a medical device and make millions off of royalties every year. He knew she had money when they got married but didn’t know how much until after. He contributes about 20% of his pay to “the household” and the rest is basically fun money because they’re not worried about retirement. He squirrels away some money on his own in case of emergency, but they will probably retire before 50. Other buddy married a girl who inherited a business from her family. Her father made a couple million and then “sold” the business to her over several years. She was a workaholic and bought him out after just a few years for a couple million, grew it into a multimillion dollar business and then sold it to an outsider for several million. They put 100% of that money away and now just work to pass the time so they don’t touch their nest egg too early.On another note: a family member of mine randomly worked their way into a c-suite exec role at a multibillion dollar company. No nepotism or prestigious MBA from Harvard or anything, just a hell of a job climbing the ladder. Their salary is about $250k/yr, get a 25-30% bonus (sometimes more) once a year and additionally earn like 10-15% stock options that vest over several years. Total compensation is about $400k every year. They once told me they do their best to live off their yearly bonus and save 100% of their salary.

#38

I know a few people who have had one hit wonder songs and made enough $ to never work again. .

#39

Some kid dropped out of nursing school to sell shoes.I see that guy on a local news later on, young millionaires in 20's something like that. Just by flipping shoes. I think the fad went away? or do people still trade and collect shoes?

#40

A bunch of guys I worked with had a lottery pool in the mid-90s. They did that for about a year, and somehow won a second or third prize, which they divided up. I remember one guy paying off his wife's school loans with the money. A couple guys got new cars. A few of them decided to do a little work outside the office, and got interested in e-commerce and interactive websites, technology that was just starting to take off. Their idea was to provide an online listing site for vacation home rentals, searchable by location and text, and to charge landlords a listing fee. They sent paper mail advertisements down to vacation areas, and bought some online ads. Travel agency websites also agreed to host some ads and links. Traffic went up steadily, especially after they registered the site with search engines, like Yahoo!, Lycos, and Altavista, After a couple of years, they made back the startup costs, and for a couple more years, it actually became what they hoped: an income supplement. They showed up at work tired sometimes, as they kept improving the site. By then, they seemed only minimally interested in their office work.By 1998 and 1999, all those lottery guys were gone. A friend in the group later told me he retired, after the site was bought for millions by a major company.He was not yet 40 years old.

#41

He had a small surf shop in the UK. In the 80s on a surf trip to Australia he ended up talking with some Aussies who had their own board short brand called Billabong. He did a deal to use their name. So he could print and sell T-Shirts and Board Shorts with the brand logo from his shop and also did a few deals with other surf shops in Tenerife and Portugal. The Aussie company got larger and branched out to Asia and South Africa then got so large that they were looking at an IPO on the ASX. Before they could IPO though they realised that this guy they did a deal with owned exclusive rights to their name and logo within Europe. They bought the name back from him and the next day he turned up to open his surf shop in a black Lamborghini Diablo.

#42

My father grew up poor in a shack on stilts in Ecuador. He managed to get a scholarship to the US in the 40’s. Studied geophysics, graduated, got a job with Standard Oil. Met & married my mother..NC native. Wound up in Cuba before during & after Castro. Eventually settled in Fl. after being ejected from Cuba. The first thing my parents wanted to do didn’t turn out, so they turned to the second with only 3k they’d saved. Never got a loan for anything. They got lucky, and they knew it. The thing they rode to their fortune was Chifles Plantain Chips. In 2000 he was a multimillionaire. He and my mother both credit incredible luck and hard work all the way. I said they lived the Horatio Alger story.

#43

Neighbor who used to live next to me was a neurosurgeon in the 60s who didn't like the tools available to him in surgery, so him and his brother started a company making polarized surgical instruments, and made em themselves. Ended up selling it for 10s of millions in the 90s. Almost all of the tech they invented is still manufactured today. Had like 25 patents and his brother (who stayed a practicing surgeon while my neighbor ran the company), is considered one of the fathers of modern neurosurgery.

#44

I knew a guy in Pontiac who bought a rusted-out delivery truck for $500, planning to turn it into a mobile bar. When he started gutting the floorboards, he found a hidden metal box full of original, un-cancelled bearer bonds from the 1940s. The bank fought him in court for three years, but he eventually walked away with $1.8 million. He now spends his days on a boat he named "The Paper Trail.".

#45

He won the EuroMillions lottery.

#46

A relative of mine had a business making small parts for defense equipment. Small cosy business.Gulf War happened, his business skyrocketed.

#47

I had a professor who grew up in a poor farming community in South Dakota. In the 50s, the government came to them and asked if they could build a missile silo on their property and paid them around $5,000 a year for the "lease", and the family was able to scale back their production requirements and the professor was the first in his family to go to college thanks to the money. The idea was to have missiles ready to launch in non populated areas in case the Soviets struck all of the major population centers.

#48

Happened to a former friend of mine. She lived in her family house in upstate NY and was a trainer at a local gym. Her neighbor was an elderly woman/former editor for the New York Times. No husband or kids. A first wave career woman in the 1950s and 60s. Anyway, this former friend started running errands for her. Then cooking meals. The woman paid her but not much. My friend was happy to do it cuz she liked her and had compassion. She eventually became her home health aide and ended up really taking care of her right until she passed away.I think you can tell where this is going but there’s a little twist. My former friend found out the woman had left her the bulk of her estate including the house. But it turned out this woman wasn’t just a middle class former editor - she was from a wealthy real estate family. This former friend apparently collapsed into a chair when she was told just how much she was inheriting.She’s never told anyone just how much but the whispers have it in the low 9 figures. No one sees her anymore. She moved to the south of France and cut communication with most of us. One question we all had was why didn’t this rich old lady hire a team of nurses to take care of her? I guess money can make people weird.

#49

A friend of mine got.. I don't want to say wealthy, but certainly well off due to a few interesting things. We were at Uni together studying different subject areas, but we were part of the same club/society - 14-odd years on, and we all still meet up regularly - Anyhow, he went on to do a Masters degree, and when he graduated he got a golden handshake from a massive company, Which he straight away put down a deposit on a house. He got paid fairly well, and most of the work was off-shore - So if he spent more than 6 months away, then he didn't have to pay taxes (Or as much tax, I'm unsure). So when he finished a job/had time off, he'd head out travelling to cool places. While he was working there, he picked up every training course on every bit of equipment he could.Then he got made redundant and created his own company basically contracting to to the work that he was doing before, and then immediately got signed on for a contract with the same company at 3 or 4 times what he was getting paid before. One of the main reasons being that as the industry moved on and equipment got upgraded, There were only a handful of people around that could decently operate some of the older gear and it was more efficient for them to pay him a tonne for this one job than to spend months getting someone else trained up on it. He's a really nice and humble bloke though, always has time for people, up for a laugh and always has a few crazy stories to tell!

#50

Tape. I knew a woman whose FIL had invented different types of tape that were used by large manufacturing companies. .

#51

You know those little lights you put on ice fishing tip ups that light up when the flag gets popped? That dude is loaded right now, all because he wanted an easier way to fish in the dark.

#52

When my best friend was born, his dad bought 100 shares of Microsoft in his name. When we were in middle school he decided that he wanted to sell them. I didn't know anything about stocks, but suggested using the proceeds to invest in this new company I kept hearing about called "Amazon."Some napkin math puts the value of those shares around $54m.

#53

One of my friends from college wanted snacks delivered because he didn’t feel like grabbing them himself. Realized that could be a business opportunity and now we have GoPuff.

#54

Our cleaner texted one day that she won’t be coming anymore because she hit the lottery. It was certainly unexpected but we’re super happy for her. “Only” a million but she was retired already and just cleaning to stay busy.

#55

Counter Strike weapon skins. Back when CSGO first started accepting user submissions into the game, I told my friend who’s a talented 3D artist to have a look into it. Both of us played CSGO anyway and we were about 18 years old at the time, so nothing to lose.His first ever submission got accepted and Valve started paying him $25k per month for his weapon skin, every month. He had to establish himself as a business for tax reasons. Shortly after this he got another submission accepted and was pulling in anywhere between $40k-$50k per month.10 years later he’s bought a nice house outright, drives a super car, and is pretty well set for life. He still gets paid, although not as much anymore as it gradually dwindled. Him and I are still close friends and he’s done a lot for me over the years, so I’m super happy it worked out for him the way it did.

#56

A former co-worker of mine got in on the ground floor of the NFT craze a few years ago. After he got fired, he divorced his wife and spent his time day trading instead of looking for a job. He met a guy on Discord that convinced him to buy a few Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. A few months later, the NFT industry, specifically Bored Ape, exploded. He sold his NFTs for a lot of money before it crashed and put that money into other crypto. It lowkey pisses me off. Bro essentially failed upward. He was just in the right place at the right time and was willing to take a stupid risk that wouldnt have paid off 99% of the time.

#57

Child care centres. Friend and a business partner spent years saving and hustling getting a centre setup. They have several centres now and live in big houses with nice cars. I didn't realise how profitable they could be.

#58

I knew a friend of a friend who created the million dollar homepage. It was a single page, and sold each pixel for one dollar. He made a clear $1million while still at university. It's admirable as such a unique idea at the time.

#59

A guy I knew worked at a private country club and he told me about the richest member there. He was some kind of engineer. Early in this man’s career he invented a new type of shut off valve for gas pipelines. It is almost used exclusively in all gas pipelines around the world. The man is a billionaire.

#60

I started leasing a ranch near the Bay Area in California in 1982. It is a little bit over 2,000 acres very close to Silicon Valley. Ownership changed hands several times over the years and I was always able to negotiate a new lease with the new owner. In the late 90’s it was acquired by an investor in Taiwan who also maintained a home in Hillsborough CA. All but one of his children went to Stanford and became MDs. The youngest chose to pursue technology. When he graduated he had difficulty finding a job. I was an executive at a large tech firm in Palo Alto at the time and managed to give him a valuable role. He is currently the CIO of a large firm on the east coast. I also completely managed the ranch. Dealing with local governments, fish and wildlife, trespassers. Basically it was a big hassle all the time that my Taiwanese friend did not have to deal with. We would meet once a year at a nice restaurant in San Francisco. I would update him on goings on at the ranch and pay my annual lease payment. In 2010 we met and he told me he had stage 4 cancer and had not long to live. He wanted me to buy the ranch because of all of his many California land investments, this one was the biggest hassle and he felt his adult children would not be have the time or inclination to deal with it. I informed him that it was worth far more than I could ever pay. He sold it to me for an amount of money so small that I was able to write him a check right then. The amount was so small that the title company called the Attorney General’s office and they investigated as they assumed something nefarious was going on. I sold it in July of this year for many millions of dollars. Basically over the years working together I had basically come to be considered family. I had helped his son and kept the owner out of the spotlight while dealing with all sorts of problems on the ranch. He valued both of those things and changed my life.

#61

Old friend/D&D buddy had never met his dad. Deadbeat that left when he was a toddler. Aged over 50 he receives information that his dad had passed and left everything to him, including money, a house in London and a villa in Spain.More than enough to pay off his own mortgage, upgrade the house, pay off debts and retire a little earlier.

#62

A few years ago, a friend of mine unexpectedly gained a massive estate. He did not know it was coming. He suddenly had unlimited money to do whatever he wanted, travel wherever he wanted. He didn’t have a loud personality so he didn’t flash his money, but there were signs. One of those signs is that he would go on vacation a lot, he would fly home more often to see his family. What was once every few months turned into every weekend. Another sign is his “pay it forward” mentality, if you were all out to dinner as group, he would quietly go to the waiter and pay for everyone. You didn’t know he was gonna do it, but he just didn’t want people to worry about the bill Sadly, he passed away this year of pancreatic cancer. You can’t buy your way out of that. He invested a lot of his money, but never truly got to experience the long term benefits of that.

#63

Guy my wife knows started trading Magic the Gathering cards literally out of his bedroom. Built it up to be big enough he is a supplier of them. Just bought a jet.

#64

Door to door vacuum cleaner salesman. Granted, 5 minutes of him "working me over" (applying his sales skills on me) felt like my head was squished through a giant banana. It was seriously an ASMR event. But even so, he showed me he had over 2 million dollars from selling vacuums door to door. Absolutely insane.

#65

His father in law hit a lottery and gave each child 1 million dollars.

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