How a Secretary Made and Gave Away $7 Million

She had a simple life, lived in a tiny one-bedroom cottage in Lake Forest, Ill.
She bought her clothes at rummage sales, didn’t own a car and worked most of her life as a secretary for Abbott Laboratories.
She worked for 43 years as a secretary for Abbott Laboratories.
In 1935, she bought three specially issued shares of Abbott for $180 (a little over $3K in today’s dollars).
Over the years, her shares split many times, and she reinvested the dividends each time.
She never sold a share, even after repeated stock splits. She also kept reinvesting the dividends.
By the time of her death at age 100 in 2010, she owned more than 100,000 shares valued at about $7 million and she left Lake Forest College a gift of $7 million to be used for scholarships.
Her name is Grace Groner and it is one of the greatest real life examples of wealth compounding.
Patience and consistency always triumph. Just the way water cuts through the rock flowing over it through the years, patience and perseverance are sure to get rewarded be it in life or investing in the markets.