At the start of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Money Trees seem like the best thing in the world. You plant some money, and a tree grows that gives you back three times what you planted. It sounds like a bargain; all you need to do is find the shiny golden dot each day, bury some cash, then make a tidy profit.
They are a lot more complicated than that, and most players realize this the hard way after burying a big bag of cash and wondering where it went what the tree only gives them back 30,000 Bells.
Burying anywhere up to 10,000 Bells will guarantee that you get 30,000 Bells in return, but after that, the game enters into what we like to refer to as the Nintendo Zone where strange things happen, and Nintendo won’t tell us why. Nintendo won’t make the exact math behind the Money Trees public, but players have already worked out the best methods to use this feature in the game.
Once you start planting over 10,000 Bells, the three bags that grow on the tree can contain either the amount that you planted or just 10,000 Bells each. This makes 10,000 Bells an attractive amount of plant, as you know what your exact return will be, without random chance eating into your profits. So, you can risk planting 15,000 Bells and only get back 10,000, meaning you have only made back double your investment instead of triple, or you can play it safe with 10,000 Bells and know that you will triple your money.
The other regular investment that people will make is to plant 99,000 Bells. The reason for this is that they are willing to run the risk of losing Bells to potentially get that 99,000 Bells back, with a further 198,000 Bells as well. This is extremely risky, but if you have Bells to spare, and are dedicated to risking that amount each day, the odds should play in your favor when it comes to making a profit.
It should be noted, it is very easy to end up in a position where you are planting 99,000 Bells, but only making the daily profit that you would have made by planting 10,000 Bells and taking the guaranteed return.
It is really about how much risk you want to take, but we would advise you to stick with the safe bet of getting 30,000 Bells and focus on many of the other ways you can earn bells in the game.
