No Pain, Lots of Gain

Most of us chase success by working hard, sacrificing our personal lives and even our health in an all-out pursuit of Mammon. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. For a fortunate few, it doesn’t mean a Harvard MBA or years spent perfecting a new drug. It just means doing as little as possible and still making more money than you ever dreamed of.

As much as industrious overachievers hate to admit it, sometimes all you need to get rich is dumb luck. One Las Vegas woman has won the lotto four times since 1993. A man in the U.K. found buried gold worth millions with a metal detector. A family facing foreclosure found a valuable Superman comic book in their basement. Not all stories are so whimsical. Other shortcuts to wealth come with strings attached: Marrying rich, divorce, or lawsuits, for example. Still, the point is that while the average Americans toils for an average wage of $22.59 per hour, according to July data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are the few who made fortunes without much labor. In other words, for the average wage earner to make a million dollars, he or she would have to work 40 hours a week for approximately 21 years. Doesn’t it sound so much easier just to buy a lottery ticket?

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Win the lottery

Most people dream of hitting the lottery just once, but Las Vegas resident Joan Ginther hit it an unbelievable four times. According to ABC News, Ginther won the Texas lottery four times over the past 17 years, winning $5.4 million in 1993, $2 million in 2006, and $3 million in 2008. Her biggest score came in 2010: a $50 scratch ticket that was worth $10 million. Lucky or just unfair?

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Inherit a fortune

Inheriting wealth can be emotionally difficult (and the feds will come for their share), but it is another way people have gotten rich without much work. Christy Walton—the widow of John Walton, a son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton—inherited her husband’s fortune after his death in a plane crash in 2005. Her estimated worth of $22.5 billion makes her one of the world’s richest people, according to Forbes.com.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Bet on the right horse, with free money

Texas software entrepreneur Glen Fullerton won $900,000 in the Kentucky Derby this year. What’s even better: He didn’t bet his own money. Fullerton, a novice gambler, won a $100,000 sweepstakes sponsored by Churchill Downs and CNBC to bet the lot on any of the horses in the field. His pick, Super Saver, with 8-to-1 odds, earned him the prize, reported nationalpost.com.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Get a hole-in-one for $1 million

It is a challenge even most pro golfers would fail. Jason Hargett, a restaurant manager and father of four, was a last-minute replacement in a $1 million hole-in-one competition at the Mark Eaton Celebrity Golf Classic in Utah in 2009, and he almost opted out because of a sore wrist, reported ESPN. Fortunately he decided to stay in. Hargett sank the ball with his brother’s 9 iron to win the prize.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Buy and hold

Long-term stock investments can pay off. Lake Forest (Ill.) resident Grace Groner worked as a secretary at Abbott Labs (ABT) for 43 years. She bought three specially issued shares of the company’s stock for $180 in 1935 and held on to them over the next seven decades, reported wsj.com. The shares split several times, and she reinvested the dividends. By the time Groner passed away this year at age 100, she had 100,000 shares valued at about $7 million.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Your bank adds a few extra zeroes to your account

Would you take millions if you had to live as a fugitive? New Zealand couple Leo Gao and Kara Hurring were managing a failing service station in Rotorua. Last May, Gao requested a NZ$100,000 overdraft from Westpac Bank. Instead he received NZ$10 million (or about US$6 million at the time) due to a typing error, reported the New Zealand Herald. Gao transferred part of the funds to various accounts in China and Hong Kong. The two left the country, and their debts, and have been on the run since. They are reportedly in China now, according to news website stuff.co.nz. Westpac Bank has recovered all but NZ$3.8 million. (The worker who botched the transaction was fired last August after she made a second error keying in a loan amount, although the second mistake did not result in a loss for the bank.)

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Find treasure in your basement

Everyone dreams that their junk at home has not only sentimental value but also huge dollar value to collectors and eBay trollers. This is rarely true, but one family recently discovered a copy of Action Comics No. 1, dated June 1938, in their basement as they cleared the house in preparation for foreclosure, reported ABC News. The comic—the first to feature Superman—has an estimated worth of $250,000 and is expected to help the family keep the house.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Get lucky at a yard sale

Those mildewing boxes at your neighbor’s next garage sale may contain more than meets the eye—hundreds of millions of dollars more. Take painter Rick Norsigian, who bought 65 glass-plate negatives at a yard sale 10 years ago that were purportedly taken by photography legend Ansel Adams in the 1920s and 1930s. While the authenticity of the negatives is being challenged, Beverly Hills art dealer David W. Streets estimates the value of the find could be $200 million, reports latimes.com.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Marry rich

Love trumps all, romantics say, so there’s no harm in enjoying some of life’s luxuries along the way. Who knows this better than Melania Knauss, a Slovenian model who married Donald Trump in 2005 to become the billionaire developer’s third wife? Forbes.com estimates Trump’s net worth to be $2 billion. The couple signed a prenuptial agreement, reported nymag.com.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Divorce a Beatle

Divorce is messy and emotional, and there’s hardly anything easy about it. Yet in some cases, one party comes away with a big chunk of change. Difficult? Yes. Lucrative? Sometimes. After four years of marriage, Heather Mills was granted about $50 million in her divorce proceedings with former Beatle Paul McCartney in 2008, reported cnn.com.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Be born rich

Some people are born with sliver spoons in their mouths, others also get an army of servants, palaces, and, oh, a kingdom to rule. The world’s royal are still among the wealthiest. Take Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei, for example, who is estimated to be worth $20 billion, according to Forbes.com.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Sue

In 2003, New York City claims examiner Cedrick Makara won a $3 million jury verdict after injuring his hand in the building where he works. He says he put his hand through a hole in a bathroom door where the knob was missing. He pulled the door just as someone else pushed it in, injuring the tendons in his thumb. As a result, Makara missed six months of work and had surgery on his hand, according to nydailynews.com. He sued the building’s owner and manager.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Unearth gold with a metal detector

Most of us have seen them—people combing the beach for loose change with metal detectors as the rest of us work on our tan. Sometimes their payoff is a little bigger. Such is the case of Terry Herbert, an unemployed Briton, who struck gold in a friend’s farm in Staffordshire, England. He found 1,600 Anglo-Saxon gold and silver pieces dating as far back as the 7th century, valued at £3.285 million (or about $5.1 million today). Herbert will get half the cash, according to The Times of London.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Give Mark Zuckerberg $1,000

Entrepreneur Paul Ceglia claims that in 2003, he hired then-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg to write code for his then-company, StreetFax, and invested an additional $1,000 in a new project the 18-year-old freshman was starting called “The Face Book.” Ceglia says the two signed a document that now entitles him to an 84 percent stake in Facebook, worth an estimated $21 billion, as reported by Businessweek.com. Facebook’s attorneys maintain the claim is baseless, but Ceglia filed suit against Facebook CEO Zuckerberg and the privately held social media company in New York State court on June 30. If Ceglia wins, he could walk away with more than $17 billion.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Catch a record-breaking home run ball, then sell it

Giving up a home run ball is tough, but a large enough bounty might ease the pain. In 1998 research scientist Phil Ozersky caught the Oakland A’s slugger Mark McGwire’s historic 70th home run ball of the season and sold it several months later to comic book artist Todd McFarlane for $3 million, reported Sports Illustrated. In 2007, New York native Matt Murphy sold Barry Bond’s 756th home run ball for $752,467, according to the Associated Press.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: No toy gets left behind

One California woman sold her late husband’s collection of 275 Transformers toys for $1 million on eBay in 2007. Some were never removed from the box, reported gizmodo.com. The husband and wife started buying the Hasbro figures and accessories from 1984 to 1987 as he was recovering from a motorcycle accident.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Register a generic domain name

What’s your favorite drink? Food? Activity? Make a list and see if any of those words have been used in domain names yet—the idea might be worth millions. One software company owner in Maryland, Chris Clark, auctioned Pizza.com for $2.6 million in 2008, reported the Associated Press. Clark originally registered it in 1994 for $20.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Have a “non-affair” with a bigwig

Silence is golden, particularly when an executive wants to keep quiet about personal matters. Event organizer Jodie Fisher and Mark Hurd, who recently resigned as Hewlett-Packard chief executive, settled a sexual harassment complaint for an undisclosed amount, reported Bloomberg.com. It’s not only CEOs—Tiger Woods reportedly paid mistress Rachel Uchitel $10 million to keep quiet on their affair, according to TMZ.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Live on a lake of oil

Some people sitting on oil suddenly strike it rich. The residents of Stanley, N.D., for example, fell into fortune in 2008 when oil companies started to show interest in drilling on their property—and hit large reserves. As a result, the town is booming and many residents are swiftly becoming millionaires, according to USA Today.

Easy Ways to Get Rich: Play hard to get with real estate developers

Owning the last house standing in the way of a big real estate project can pay off. This April, Daniel Goldstein, the final holdout property owner against the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, sold his three-bedroom apartment for $3 million—about five times what he paid for it in 2003, according to nytimes.com.

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