You’ll need plenty of money in the bank to forge an island utopia in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Often, even the trees you’ve planted which literally grow money can’t keep up. Fortunately, there are a few options for earning more dosh. Some of them are above board and some of them are a little shady. Here we’re going to over one that leans toward the latter. It’s an exploit that takes advantage of the bank interest you’re able to accumulate. Here’s how to use bank interest to make Bells fast and easy in Animal Crossing New Horizons.
Warning: Once again, using this method is absolutely a time travel exploit of the game and the console. If you prefer to use techniques that stay within the “rules,” then do check out our guide on planting & growing money trees and getting Gold Nuggets and our summary of (above board) techniques to getting Bells fast.
Otherwise, read on.
How to Use Bank Interest to Earn Bells Quickly in Animal Crossing New Horizons
As alluded to above, the bank interest system exploits the Nintendo Switch console’s time and date settings to time travel and earn you mega interest. It works because unlike in real life, banks in New Horizons actually pay out decent interest rates!
The one caveat to this technique is that it is better used right at the very start of your game. You can use it later on but you may find villagers have left and the town being overgrown with weeds.
So how does the technique work? Follow this step-by-step breakdown and you’ll be laughing all the way, er, from the bank:
Time needed: 1 day
To sum up how to How to Use Bank Interest to Earn Bells Quickly in Animal Crossing New Horizons:
- Put all the money you have into a bank account. Obviously, the more the better.
- Now save and exit your game before entering the settings menu of your Nintendo Switch and changing the year to 2000. To do so, access “System Settings” from the “HOME Menu,” scroll down and enter “System,” then select “Date and Time.” Change it to 2000 (don’t worry about the month/day).
- When you restart New Horizons, Tom Nook will acknowledge the year is 2000. Check your mail and notice that the bank has alerted you to your bank interest (but there’s nothing actually there since you went back in time). Don’t do anything else. Just save the game and once again exit.
- Access system settings once again but this time set the date to something far-flung in the future, like, say 2050, and then start the game again.
- Voila! Tom Nooks will acknowledge the year is 2050 and you’ll have a whopping amount of interest in your bank to make use of. The max amount of interest you can earn is $1 million. Of course, you’ll only hit that if you had plenty of money in the account to start with. To earn more interest, repeat the process. Just remember you only accumulate interest moving forward in time — duh!
That’s all the information you should need on how to use bank interest to earn Bells quickly in Animal Crossing New Horizons. For more useful tips and guides on the game, do check out Twinfinite’s extensive guide wiki.
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