How To Make Money Fast On Animal Crossing New Leaf

Dreamhowl plays Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Happy Home Designer. She enjoys decorating her home and starting new projects.

Learn how to make Bells by hitting rocks, shaking trees, catching bugs and more!

Jessica Marello, Fair Use: Animal Crossing: New Leaf (video game)

What Are Bells?

In Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the Nintendo 3DS, Bells are the form of currency used to buy and sell goods and services. Players need Bells to purchase items from the shops in town, to expand their home with Tom Nook, buy items from villagers and more. Bells are not difficult to earn, through the process can be time-consuming. Discover the best and quickest methods to make Bells in Animal Crossing: New Leaf in this guide.

1. Check the Rocks

Careful - when you hit a rock with your shovel, you will experience a little bounce-back!

Jessica Marello, Fair Use: Animal Crossing: New Leaf (video game)

There are several rocks spread around your town in different locations. Every day, one rock will dispense Bells when hit with your shovel, and another will be fake, depositing an ore when hit. The fake rock only needs to be hit once, while the money rock needs to be hit with a shovel up to eight times to receive all the Bells. With the money rock:

Up to eight piles of Bells will drop
The Bells operate on a time limit
Only a shovel will work on the rock

Once you start hitting the money rock with your shovel, you need to be quick - time can run out, and you may miss your opportunity to get all eight stacks of Bells. Try digging holes in the ground behind you, so you don't bounce so far away from the rock with each hit. If your money luck is running high, you can earn up to 32,000 Bells from the money rock!

2. Shake the Trees

Shaking trees can help you find spare bells, furniture or beehives (and angry bees).

Jessica Marello, Fair Use: Animal Crossing: New Leaf (video game)

When you first create your town, there are numerous trees dispersed around the landscape. Fruit trees drop their respective fruit when shaken, while cedar and oak trees can drop Bells, furniture, or beehives. You will have to shake the trees to see what drops from each. Players can earn the following daily by shaking trees:

100 Bells total
2 pieces of furniture
5 beehives

When beehives drop from the trees, bees will come flying out and sting you! Beestings cause your character's face to swell up, which villagers will notice and sometimes make fun of. You can avoid beestings by opening your town gate before shaking your trees; bees cannot come out while your town is open for visitors, and only the beehives will drop.

3. Dig for Fossils

Fossils are fun - you can donate new ones to the museum, and sell the extras!

Jessica Marello, Fair Use: Animal Crossing: New Leaf (video game)

The ground beneath your town in Animal Crossing: New Leaf is full of ancient fossils and dinosaur bones! Every day, players can dig up to four fossils from the ground. Fossils need to be assessed by Blathers, the owl curator of the Museum. Your best approach is to donate all of your fossils to the museum first—any duplicates you find can be sold for spare Bells.

The highest-selling fossil—a T-Rex Skull—yields only 6,000 Bells, so they aren't the best Bell-makers. If you don't want to sell your fossils, you can save them to display in your home (which earns extra HHA points) or give completed fossil sets to Cyrus at ReTail to create mini models of the dinosaurs.

4. Catch Bugs and Fish

This straw box allows you to transport bugs and fish from the island to your town.

Jessica Marello, Fair Use: Animal Crossing: New Leaf (video game)

Once you gain access to the island by talking to Tortimer (the previous mayor of your town) you can catch expensive bugs and fish in a permanent summer paradise. Trips to the island cost 1,000 Bells there and back, and are well worth the payment. The island offers a plethora of bugs and fish that cannot be found in your town, and can be shipped back via a shipping box.

Beetles offer the most Bells when being sold to Reese at ReTail, and the rarest beetles come out late at night, at least past 7:00 PM. Beetles spawn on palm trees, and can be caught with the bug net by holding down the A button to sneak up on them. The most expensive beetles are the following:

Golden Stag: 12,000
Horned Hercules: 12,000
Cyclommatus Stag: 8,000
Horned Atlas: 8,000
Horned Elephant: 8,000

Beetles are far easier to catch than fish, but if you want a change of scenery, you can catch some expensive fish. Sharks yield the most Bells when sold—as much as 15,000 Bells each—but are uncommon spawns. Sharks can be told apart from other fish on the island by their fins sticking out of the water.

5. Sell Items at ReTail

Every day, Reese lists one item that she will pay extra Bells for if you sell to her.

Jessica Marello, Fair Use: Animal Crossing: New Leaf (video game)

ReTail is the flea market store run by Reese and Cyrus in town. By talking to Reese, players can sell various items, such as fruit, bugs, fish, furniture, and ores. Players can also put certain items up on display in "flea market" spots. Players choose the price of these items, and leave them open for villagers to walk in and buy them for their own houses.

ReTail is the best place to sell your bugs and fish from the island, along with other items. Furthermore, Reese has "high price items" listed on the sign outside of the shop daily. She will pay more for the items listed that day; it may be worth it to catch or gather the items she lists to make some extra Bells.

6. Sell Perfect Fruit

Perfect fruit can be grown on your native fruit trees (the fruit that exists in your town when you start the game) and sells for a lot more than normal fruit. Perfect fruit looks different compared to normal fruit, so it is easily recognizable. Apart from selling it in your town, perfect fruit can be sold in other towns for an even higher amount of Bells.

If you find a perfect fruit, you can plant it to create a perfect fruit tree. These trees grow only perfect fruit, but die off after being harvested a few times. Furthermore, one of the perfect fruit that you harvest before the tree dies will be rotten. Do NOT sell the rotten fruit to Reese—she will be so upset, she will charge you to dispose of it, and not compensate you for any other items.

7. Follow the Stalk Market

If you talk to Reese at ReTail, she will tell you the current turnip prices for the day.

Jessica Marello, Fair Use: Animal Crossing: New Leaf (video game)

Every Sunday morning between 6 AM and 12 PM, Joan the boar sells turnips while walking around town. Monday to Saturday, you can sell the turnips back at ReTail, but the price fluctuates daily. The prices may follow a pattern, or they may not. Any turnips bought on Sunday will expire the following Sunday. Joan generally asks for 90 to 110 Bells per turnip.

Turnip prices change two times a day—they are one price when ReTail opens, and change again at 12 PM. Talk to Reese to ask about the turnip prices. If prices are low in your town, they may be high in a friend's town. There are four different Stalk Market patterns—decreasing, big spike, small spike, and random price—but no guarantees that you won't lose Bells.

8. Practice Feng Shui

Cyrus at ReTail will change the colors of your items, which is great for Feng Shui!

Jessica Marello, Fair Use: Animal Crossing: New Leaf (video game)

Feng Shui is a Chinese practice of moving furniture and other items in the home to increase the flow of positive energy. In Animal Crossing: New Leaf, the home is divided into four basic sections of color—yellow, red, yellow/green, and red/green. Players need to match appropriately colored items in their corresponding sections:

Feng Shui, Locations and Item Colors


Feng Shui	Room Location	Item Color
Money	Top Left	Yellow
	Bottom Left	Yellow
Items	Top Right	Red
	Bottom Right	Red
Luck	Bottom Left	Green
	Bottom Right	Green

In a smaller 4x4 room, only the top left, bottom left, top right, and bottom right sections of the home apply. With a large 6x6 room, items placed in the bottom center of the house also apply to Feng Shui. Yellow items increase money luck, red items increase the number of items you might find, and green items increase your overall luck. It never hurts to be extra lucky!

Once you start taking these steps into account, you are sure to make dozens more Bells! Then you can spend them all on public works projects, or continue to pay off your massive home loans to Tom Nook. How do you plan on spending your newly earned Bells?

Jessica Peri (author) from United States on October 19, 2017:

@Alexis That's another good idea!

Alexis on October 11, 2017:

Great tips. I get a lot of my bells from selling rare bugs or fruit that is not native to the region.