IFB24: Examples of Everyday People Who Became Millionaire Investors

Welcome to session 24 of the Investing for Beginners podcast. In today’s show we are going to discuss some average, everyday investors who used the principles that we discuss here to become millionaire investors.
In today’s show we look at a few ordinary people that were able to generate incredible returns over their lifetimes, in fact, they earned more money than they could spend in their lifetimes. So much so that they ended up giving the majority to charity, much like Warren Buffett intends to do with his wealth.
We are going to discuss some inspirational stories for you tonight, these people that we will discuss have taken a lot of the strategies and ideas that we propose and have put them to good use. We want to give these stories to you as a way of helping inspire you to continue down the path that you have already started.

* Buy and hold can be a very lucrative strategy
* Reinvesting the dividends is a great way to double compound your money
* You don’t to have a large portfolio with tons of stocks
* With patience and diligence you can become wealthy by sticking to your strategy over the long-term
* The strategies that we discuss can be successful even for average investors like ourselves.

Andrew: I am going to quote what is here on the Wall Street Journal because of I love the way they started this, it reminds me of that commercial for Dos Equis, the most interesting man in the world.
It goes: “She lived in a tiny, one bedroom cottage in Lake Forest, Illinois. She bought her clothes at rummage sales, didn’t own a car, and worked most of her life as a secretary for a pharmaceutical company.”
The Wall Street Journal article talked about Grace Groner, and at age 100 she left $7 million to be used for scholarship. The story behind her is exactly like the intro makes it sound. She is just your average joe, what she did she was able to buy a couple of shares of a stock, and she held onto for a very long time.
She turned a small amount of money into millions of dollars. It was the stock Abbot Laboratories, and anybody who’s been following the market is kind of familiar with some of the bigger stories that have happened.
And bigger success stories will know that Abbott for a very long time has been super successful at compounding money and paying out dividends, growing the dividends, and the stock price has just shot up. The earnings, dividends have been shooting up and even recently too, in the past decade.
It’s been one of those companies that are the pinnacle example of American capitalism, really the American dream. They have been able to create all this revenue, jobs, earnings and dividends and it created some wealth.
That wealth has done some great things for a lot of people through Grace. That stocks were called Abbott, it was $60 a share when she bought it. She bought three shares, and this was in 1935.
It turned into $9 million dollars and when they stopped counting it when she died. It was around 2010; we are talking about very long time, 75 years. What she did was just let it grow, the shares they were splitting over time, and she was just reinvesting the dividends.
That small pile of money or small ownership stake in the company was growing over time, getting compounding interest. And seeing the stock price continue to go up as well.
It’s inspiring to me because it shows how there are a couple of different ways that t...