Designing your island on Animal Crossing New Horizons can become an expensive task, but there are ways to make money faster in the game, making it easier to concentrate on making your very own dream island.

Not only do you need money in Animal Crossing New Horizons to buy new items that can be used to decorate your home and island, you also need money to be able to upgrade your house, which will offer you more room and storage.

If you’re new to the game, you might want to check out our Animal Crossing New Horizons tips and tricks to getting started, it’s the perfect resource for new players.

1. Evaluate Item Prices in Nook’s Cranny

You will need to have progressed far enough in the game to have opened Nook’s Cranny, but once you have, you can use the drop-off box to help you make more money. If you have not progressed far enough yet, check out our getting started guide.

The box to the left of the shop allows you to drop off items you would like to sell, and the cute little raccoons that run the shop will send the money to you later, which is a great addition if you are in a rush.

But there is an even better bonus to this, unlike when you sold items before the shop was built, the drop-off box will show you the value of each item.

Use this to help you find out how much each item is worth, now you can work out what is actually worth the time gathering and what will make little profit. Knowledge is key, and once you have it, making a profit becomes much quicker.

2. Planting Bells

You may have seen the little glowing holes in the ground? Well if you dig those up you get 1,000. You will also notice that the hole you have taken the bells from is now glowing golden, unless you fill it in, or plant something in the hole.

If you have the patience to do so, planting 10,000 bells into the hole it came from will let you grow a money tree worth 30,000 bells.

It might not be instant money, but you will find a fair few of these money pits around your island, so it’s worth investing 10,000 bells to make 30,000 back per money tree.

So yeah, with Animal Crossing New Horizons, money does actually grow on trees!

3. Collecting the Wisp’s Missing Pieces

If you travel your island at night time, you may have noticed a Wisp floating around. Go speak to him and he will break up into 5 pieces, politely asking you to collect them with a net for him.

Doing so will result in him offering you two separate rewards, an item of furniture you do not yet have, or an expensive item, of course, if you are after bells, make sure to pick the expensive item and sell it for profit.

4. Selling Bugs and Fish for Profit

Most bugs and fish you come across on your island are worthless, however, there are a few, rarer, or even seasonal ones that are much more valuable. If you already have these animals in the museum, selling them to Nook’s Cranny can often fetch a great price.

You can also craft and use fish bait to guarantee that a fish comes to you. which of course will make your fishing expedition much easier.

It’s also worth noting that depending on where you fish, what time of the day it is, and even the month, will have an effect on the fish you catch. For example, catching a fish in the river will definitely be different to a fish you catch in the sea.

Use the evaluation trick from point 1 above to learn which fish are the most valuable and once you learn where to find them keep frequenting the same spots to ensure you catch more of them.

Wasps, tarantulas, and scorpions are great examples of bugs that sell for a higher profit.

5. Sell Non-Native Fruit

Selling fruit that is not native to your island will fetch you 500 bells per piece, if you have friends on your Nintendo online account, visit their islands and trade for fruit, this will allow you to go back and sell it at a high price to Nooks Cranny.

If you have a friend that has a different native fruit to you, take some of your native fruit to their island, and you can sell it at the store on their island for more than you would get on your own, as the fruit isn’t native to them. Or simply swap some fruit with your friend and take it back to your own island.

If you play solo, it might take a little longer, but you can visit other islands and hope that you will find new fruit that isn’t native to your island.

6. Selling Spare Fossils

Every day you will have new fossils appear on your island and it won’t take long before you start getting ones you have already handed in.

As you can see from the image below, they are worth a decent amount of bells, so make sure to go out every day and check for them.

As there can be a good amount of fossils each day on your island, if you need quick money and not too worried about collecting them in the museum, it may even be worth just selling them all. You can always get them again when you don’t need so much money.

7. Clearing Your Island Every Day

Whilst many of the items on your island might not be worth a huge amount, it’s worth clearing out your island of certain items each day as they will respawn and can be a constant flow of bells.

The items I tend to sell each day are:

• Fruit from all my tress – I have also planted all types of fruits as this will get you, Nook Miles
• Shells – You can find them all over the beech and are very quick to collect
• Weeds – These make you island look nicer once cleared up and make you some money, so why not invest the time in doing it
• Fish, fossils, and bugs – as mentioned above some are worthless some are worth a lot, it’s worth catching as many as you can to keep topping up your funds.

Whilst Animal Crossing New Horizons is a great game, this particular way of making money can make it a bit dull sometimes, so only do this thoroughly if you really need the bells.

8. Shaking Trees

Most of the time when you shake trees, you will just get sticks, fruit, or attacked by angry bees. Sometimes though, you get furniture and that can be worth a lot of bells to sell.

The drop rate isn’t great, so I wouldn’t look to make this your main way to bring bells in, but if you’ve done everything else and have some extra time, it can’t hurt to shake a few trees, well unless you shake a wasps nest out of the tree, then it will hurt.

9. Buying & Selling Turnips

Want to feel like the Wolf of Wall Street? Then this option is for you. Buying and selling turnips is a very hit-or-miss way of making money.

You can purchase turnips every Sunday between 4 am and 12 pm from Daisy Mae, with the buying price being randomized between 90 to 110 bells. Sadly, turnips do not work like other vegetables in Animal Crossing New Horizons, you cannot plant them and can only buy them on Sundays.

Turnips are kept in stacks of 10 and you can buy as many as you want, you can even throw loads on the floor to make room to buy even more.

In my house I have even gone as far as turning my basement into a storage room for turnips, by not having anything in there at all to maximize floor space, sometimes I even use a couple of rooms.

Every day, twice per day (apart from Sunday) Nook’s Cranny will alter their buying price for turnips, so much like the stock market, you will need to wait to buy and sell at the best possible times to make a profit. Just make sure to sell them before they go bad on the following Sunday.

If you get a good price for your turnips, you can invite other players to come and sell on your island too, this often results in the other players leaving you some bells as a sign of gratitude.