By 1995, A Retired IRS Auditor Had Turned $5,000 Into $22 Million Using A Surprisingly Boring Investing Strategy.
A federal auditor who never earned more than $4,000 a year died alone in a Manhattan studio, and the fortune she quietly assembled stunned everyone who thought they knew how wealth was built.
A Modest Salary and a Fortune Nobody Expected
A retired federal auditor died on January 9, 1995, at 101. In 23 years at the Internal Revenue Service, she never earned more than $4,000 annually. Her stock portfolio was worth about $22 million.
She started with $5,000 in savings, though her executor challenged claims about her investing skill.
A Stalled Career and a Stock Market Obsession
She had a law degree but was never promoted. She retired as a government auditor in 1944, in her early fifties, thinking she was held back because she was a woman.
For decades she lived alone in a Manhattan studio, spending nearly all her time following the stock market.
Four Habits Behind the Fortune, as Reported
These details come from later secondhand coverage, and some lack attribution in original reporting.
She bought what worked. She noticed wealthy people whose tax returns she reviewed owned stocks and bought similar companies. The AP listed Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO | KO Price Prediction), Paramount, and Schering-Plough among her holdings. Her portfolio eventually covered more than 100 companies.
She did the homework. She studied earnings reports, management quality, and products. The New York Times summed up her approach as “hang tough and seldom sell”.
She reinvested everything. She put nearly all dividends and earnings back into investments.
She tuned out the noise. She ignored market swings and rarely sold on headlines. Her broker said she was never looking for “a quick buck”.
Why the Starting Figure Deserves an Asterisk
Her executor called the claims about her skill exaggerated. A separate estimate places her holdings at about $21,000 by 1936, years before she retired, inferred from $900 in dividend income on her tax return that year.
The exact starting point is uncertain, so the headline figure is best read as a reported number open to challenged.
Anne Scheiber Left Her Fortune to Educate Women
Her name was Anne Scheiber. She left nearly her entire fortune to Yeshiva University for scholarships for Jewish women at its women’s college and medical school. She also left $50,000 to her niece and $100,000 to the American Society for Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
University president Norman Lamm said “elation” would be an understatement and that “at first” he didn’t thinking it.
She left nearly everything to educate women, thinking her own career had been limited because of her gender.
A Plain Method Backed by Decades of Patience
Her method was plain: buy sound companies, reinvest dividends, hold for decades, ignore the noise. Her edge was time and the patience to do nothing with it. What to watch: whether blue chips she owned, like Coca-Cola, keep growing their dividends.
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AJ spent 10 years writing about financial markets at The Motley Fool. His coverage centers on technology stocks and the broader macroeconomic trends, from interest rates to geopolitics, that shape where markets are headed next. AJ is drawn to the stories where big-picture economics and individual companies collide.
