The Secret Millionaires Next Door part 1

How Ordinary Workers Built Extraordinary Wealth

Dear Investors.

Zee here. What if I told you that some of the most successful investors in history weren’t hedge fund managers, investment bankers, or tech entrepreneurs?

What if the blueprint for building life-changing wealth came not from Wall Street, but from a janitor in Vermont, a tax auditor in New York, and a secretary in Brooklyn?

These aren’t fairy tales. These are real people who transformed modest salaries into multi-million dollar fortunes using strategies so simple, so unsexy, and so contrary to today’s get-rich-quick culture that most people dismiss them entirely.

In this 2-part issue, I want to share their stories and reveal the timeless principles that made them wealthy, principles that anyone can apply, regardless of income, education, or starting point.

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The $8 Million Janitor Who Stunned Vermont

Ronald Read never looked like a millionaire. In fact, he looked like the opposite.

He drove a beat-up 2007 Toyota Yaris, parking in spaces without meters to save a few quarters. His clothes were so worn that he held his coat together with safety pins. Well into his nineties, he still chopped his own firewood rather than pay someone to do it. His one daily indulgence was an English muffin with peanut butter and a cup of coffee at the local hospital café, always sitting on the exact same stool.

Read worked as a gas station attendant for 25 years, then took a part-time janitor job at JCPenney, where he worked for another 17 years until 1997. He never earned a high salary. He never got a big promotion. To everyone who knew him in Brattleboro, Vermont, he was simply a hardworking, frugal man living a modest life.

Then Ronald Read died in June 2014 at age 92.

When his will was read, the entire community was shocked. The janitor who used safety pins to hold his coat together had quietly accumulated a fortune of nearly $8 million.

“He was a hard worker, but I don’t think anybody had an idea that he was a multimillionaire,” his stepson Phillip Brown told local media. Even Read’s family was “tremendously surprised” by his hidden wealth.

How Did He Do It?

Read amassed his fortune by investing in dividend-producing stocks, avoiding companies he didn’t understand, living frugally, and being a buy-and-hold investor in a diversified portfolio with a heavy concentration in blue-chip stocks.

When Read died, he owned shares in at least 95 companies. According to The Wall Street Journal, many of these holdings had been in his portfolio for years, if not decades. His investments included household names you’d recognize: Procter & Gamble, JPMorgan Chase, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, CVS Health, J.M. Smucker, and Dow Chemical.

These weren’t exciting tech startups or speculative penny stocks. They were boring, predictable companies that made everyday products, companies that paid reliable dividends year after year, companies that increased those dividends for decades.

Read’s approach was almost comically simple. He bought quality companies, reinvested the dividends, and waited. He didn’t day-trade. He didn’t watch CNBC. He didn’t panic during market crashes. He just held on, letting time and compounding work their magic.

The power of his patience becomes clear when you examine the numbers. If Read had started investing with modest amounts in 1945 after returning from World War II, and achieved returns similar to the overall market over the next 60 years, even small regular contributions would have grown to enormous sums. Every dollar he saved in 1945 would have been worth approximately $1,200 by 2014 at average market returns.

His Legacy Lives On

Read bequeathed $4.8 million to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and $1.2 million to Brooks Memorial Library, with both bequests being the largest donations the institutions had received. He also left $2 million to his stepchildren, caregivers, and friends.

“It was the talk of the town,” Brooks Memorial Library director Starr LaTronica recalled. “People still come in and ask about it and reference it.” The library invested the bulk of the money so it would continue generating returns and supporting the community for generations.

The hospital used the funds for infrastructure improvements and modernization projects. “There are multiple areas in the hospital that need to be updated, and so this money will certainly allow us to do that,” explained Gina Pattison, the hospital’s director of development. “We are just incredibly fortunate and grateful.”

Ronald Read’s story reminds us that wealth building isn’t about earning a massive salary or finding the next hot stock. It’s about consistency, patience, and letting time do the heavy lifting.

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Anne Scheiber: The Tax Auditor Who Outperformed Warren Buffett

If Ronald Read’s story sounds impressive, wait until you hear about Anne Scheiber.

Anne was born in 1893 into a family of nine children. When her father died after losing the family’s savings in bad real estate investments, young Anne had to start working as a bookkeeper at just 15 years old. She eventually saved enough to put herself through college, graduating with a law degree, a remarkable achievement for a woman in that era.

But Anne’s professional life was marked by frustration and discrimination. As a Jewish woman working at the IRS in the 1920s and 1930s, she faced rampant prejudice. Despite working diligently as an auditor for 23 years, she never received a promotion. Her annual salary peaked at just $4,000, equivalent to around $50,000 in today’s dollars, but still a modest income.

When Scheiber retired from the IRS in 1944 at age 51, she had only $5,000 saved up and a $3,100 annual pension.

That’s where most people’s stories would end. A woman in her fifties with $5,000 and a small pension doesn’t sound like someone destined for financial greatness.

But Anne Scheiber had been paying attention during her years auditing tax returns. She noticed something important: wealthy people owned stocks. Not just any stocks, but shares in solid companies that paid dividends.

So she decided to do the same.

50 Years of Discipline

Over the next 50 years, Scheiber studied the markets and accumulated wealth while living frugally in a rent-stabilized New York apartment studio. She continued to live in the same apartment she’d moved into in 1944, wearing the same clothing, taking the same subway rides.

Her frugality became legendary. She once took food from a shareholder meeting and ate it over the next three days. She walked everywhere to save bus fare. Her attorney Ben Clark told Money Magazine that she was saving at least 80% of her salary, finding the cheapest meals possible in New York City.

But Scheiber wasn’t just cheap, she was strategic. Her portfolio included blue-chip stocks like PepsiCo, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers, Chrysler, and entertainment companies such as Columbia Pictures and Paramount. As a former IRS auditor, she understood taxes and structured her investments to minimize capital gains exposure.

She attended shareholder meetings religiously, staying informed about her investments without paying for expensive advisory services. She reinvested every dividend, letting the power of compounding work for decade after decade.

The Shocking Revelation

When Anne Scheiber died in January 1995 at age 101, the world discovered her secret.

Her estate was valued at $22 million, which she donated entirely to Yeshiva University for scholarships for women.

That’s not a typo. The woman who never earned more than $4,000 a year, who held her coat together to save money, who lived in the same small apartment for 51 years, had quietly built a $22 million fortune.

Her lawyer, Benjamin Clark, told The New York Times, “You think Warren Buffett, you know, that guy, was good at this sort of thing? She ran rings around Warren Buffett.”

While Clark later noted that some claims about Scheiber’s investing prowess were exaggerated, and she likely started with more than $5,000 (perhaps closer to $20,000 based on her 1936 tax returns), the achievement remains extraordinary. Turning $20,000 into $22 million over 60 years represents a return slightly higher than the S&P 500, achieved through simple buy-and-hold investing in quality dividend stocks.

A Legacy for Women

Anne’s entire fortune went to establishing scholarships for women at Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She wanted to ensure that other women, especially Jewish women, would have the educational and employment opportunities that had been denied to her.

“Here’s a woman who for 101 years was childless and now becomes a mother to a whole community,” said the president of Yeshiva University in 1995. “Not only now, but for generations to come.”

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The Secretary Who Copied Her Bosses’ Investments

The pattern continues with Sylvia Bloom, a secretary who worked at a law firm in New York for 67 years. When she died at 96, she left behind an estate worth $9 million, yet relatives and even her husband had no idea just how wealthy she really was.

Bloom had worked as a secretary at a law firm, observing investments made by the lawyers she served and making smaller purchases of the same stocks for herself. While the lawyers were buying thousands of shares, Bloom would quietly buy just a few shares of the same companies. Over 67 years, this strategy quietly accumulated millions.

Bloom lived modestly, never flaunting wealth or living beyond her secretary’s salary. After her death, her fortune was placed in a scholarship fund to help students pursue education, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Then there’s Grace Groner, a secretary at Abbott Laboratories who invested $180 in three shares of her employer’s stock in 1935. She held those shares for 75 years, reinvesting all dividends. With neither a husband nor kids, the secret millionaire lived an unassuming life, residing in a one-bedroom apartment and working as a secretary for her entire life, investing cleverly in stocks and allowing compound interest to build up on her investments.

When Groner died, her $7 million estate funded scholarships at Lake Forest College for students pursuing independent study, internships, and international programs.

To be continued next issue..

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Disclaimer: All information here is for educational purposes only. This is not financial advice. Please do your own research and speak with a licensed advisor before making any investment decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.