How to Get Bells Quickly in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

So, you've finally secured yourself a copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Maybe it's your first game in the franchise and you're not quite sure what to do first, or maybe you're a veteran who just wants a refresher course. Regardless, you're all ready to build a perfect animal town on your perfect island from the comfort of your luxurious... tent.

You'll find very quickly that to do anything in this game you'll need Bells, the local currency. Luckily, you can now use "Nookmiles" (which are essentially daily challenges) to pay off your debt to real estate mogul Tom "Hail Corporate" Nook and expand your house. This frees you up to use your Bells on the specific kinds of furniture, equipment, or decorations you want to truly make your island home. Because Animal Crossing runs on daily cycles, you'll want to get started on these money-earning tips and tricks right away.

How to Get Bells Quickly in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Sell Your Native Fruit

Each island in Animal Crossing will have a native fruit, which will be either apples, cherries, peaches, oranges, or pears. Which fruit you get is totally random, so be prepared to either soft reset until you get what you want or resign yourself to live the cherry life for the next 100 hours. Each native fruit can be sold for a few Bells, so for the first few days make sure to scour your entire island for every last fruit. Head to the Nooklings store and sell away!

Plant Exotic Fruit Trees

Traveling to another island will usually yield a large amount of exotic fruit. This can be sold back home for a bit more cash than your native fruit, but why keep a fish when you could keep a fishing pole? Plant a few exotic fruits on your island, water them, and watch them become renewable sources of cash when you check in every day.

Hold on to Your Perfect Fruit

Occasionally you'll stumble upon a perfect fruit, which presumably tastes very good. These perfect fruits can be sold for insane prices, but you'll want to hold on to your perfect native fruit until you visit a friend's island where it's considered exotic. Selling a perfect exotic fruit could net you up to 3,000 Bells in one go, so make sure you don't waste them.

Shake those Trees

Besides dropping branches for crafting, trees will sometimes drop a small amount of Bells. Make sure to shake every tree on your island each day!

Find the Money Rock

It's not huge, but every little bit makes a difference. Every day, one random rock in your town will become "The Money Rock." Find it and strike it with your shovel to make it drop a number of Bells. Remember to do this every day, because the number of Bells it drops rises with each subsequent day you collect it.

Get Your Fossils Analyzed Before Selling

Every day, four fossils can be found somewhere around your island. Until you can get Blathers the museum curator to show up on your island, continue to stockpile these. You can identify where they're hidden from a small crack in the ground.  It's worth the five or so minutes it'll take you to scour the island and find all four of them each day. Make sure to take your fossils to Blathers before selling them. He'll analyze and identify them (for free) and then ask if you'd like to donate them. This is the crossroads. If you want to expand your museum, donate the fossils. The mechanical benefit of donating items to the museum is the gift of more Nookmiles. If you want to get cash money, take them back to the store and sell them for anywhere between 1,000 and 3,000 Bells apiece. On a good day you can bring home 10,000 Bells just from fossils with 10 minutes of work.

Sell Your Insects and Fish

Insect catching and fishing are two of the core pillars of the Animal Crossing experience. You'll need to sneak up on bugs before catching them in your net, but if you keep an open eye you can easily find over a dozen unique species in a day on your island, not to mention any others you visit. You can also donate these to the museum and they'll be added to your live biodome-esque exhibit. Insects can be sold for a modest sum, but especially in the early game, it adds up. Fish are largely the same, although you may be a bit more tempted to donate many of them to Blathers because of how cool the aquarium is in this game. Again, you'll need to choose between donating critters for Nookmiles or selling them for Bells.

Sell Miscellaneous Items

If you find an object that isn't a crafting material, a tool or a furnishing you'd like to keep, go ahead and sell it. And yes, that includes weeds. Make your island look pretty by removing them and trading in the weeds for about 10 Bells each—not a bad deal.

Play the Stalk Market

The real stock market isn't looking so hot right now, but in the world of Animal Crossing, it is thriving. Look for a young boar named Daisy Mae on Sunday between midnight and noon and inquire about turnip stalks. She'll sell you a turnip for a charge of around 90 Bells. You essentially have one week to sell it to the Nooklings before it goes bad and becomes a waste of Bells, so stay vigilant. You'll want to check in with Timmy and Tommy every day to see what the Stalk Market fluctuations have been. There are patterns to watch for, but generally, if you can sell for 200–300 Bells, you should go ahead and do so. You can make up to 800 Bells if you sell at the exact right time, but you probably won't get an offer that lucrative every week. Make sure to check the Stalk Market prices when you're on a friend's island, the chances of getting a good price are known to be higher.

Watch out for Hot Items, Especially Ones You Can Craft

Every day, the Nooklings will have a new "hot item" on their bulletin board (or you can just ask Timmy or Tommy in the store what it is). The hot item will sell for a good deal more money than usual, so make sure to sell as many as you can make. If the hot item is, say, wooden posts, grind out some wood from every tree on your island and use all your materials to make wooden posts. Sell them to the Nooklings for a huge profit. Remember that each island has its own hot item every day, so if you're planning to visit a friend's island, ask what their hot item is ahead of time so you can take it with you—it might be something you've been stockpiling.

Any more hot tips for getting rich quick in Animal Crossing: New Horizons? Found a new way to game the Stalk Market? Let us know in the comments below!