At the age of eighty, Hetty Green lived like a pauper in an unheated apartment. To save the cost of heating her food, she ate only cold eggs and onions. In order to save more money, Hetty wore newspapers instead of underwear. She had only the bottoms of her dresses cleaned. A very poor person, you say? No, Hetty was one of America’s richest women.

Hetty Green was born in 1835, in a rich section of Bellow Falls, Vermont. When her father died, she was left a large fortune. She took all of her money and invested in the stock market. Her stocks did so well that she became known as “the wizard of Wall Street.”

But though she was rich, Hetty Green was extremely cheap. For instance, when her son, Edward, broke his leg,she refused to call for a doctor. She felt it would cost too much. So she carried her son to a charity hospital. Still, young Edward’s leg got worse. Finally, the leg had to be removed to save the boy’s life. But Hetty still didn’t want to pay the hospital fee. Instead, in order to save more money, she had her son’s operation done on the kitchen table in her house.

When Hetty died in 1916, she was worth over $120 million. Yet this tight-fisted woman had lived as though she barely had a cent.

Before Hetty Green was born, her family had made millions with their whaling fleet and shipping interests. Hetty’s grandfather would talk to her about financial matters and encourage her to read financial papers. When Hetty was 20, her father bought her a wardrobe full of the finest dresses of the season, in order to attract wealthy suitors. However Hetty sold her new wardrobe and bought government bonds with the proceeds.

However she took a $6 million inheritance and invested it into a fortune worth $2.5 billion in 2020 dollars on the stock market, making her the richest woman in the world at that time. What’s her investment strategy? Well, she was one of the pioneers of value investing, way before Warren Buffet. She amassed her vast fortune through discipline and conservative methods. She told the New York Times in 1905, “ I buy when things are low and nobody wants them. I keep them until they go up and people are anxious to buy.” This has caused her to be called “ the grandmother of value investing.

Aside from the fortune she made, Hetty’s most notable accomplishment is probably living her life exactly as she wished in a make-dominated society and industry at a time when by law a woman’s property was controlled by her husband. She was known to use vulgar language, carry a gun, and travel great distances alone. She also created an early example of prenuptial agreement, when she married Edward Green, a wealthy Vermont businessman. Unlike her, he was a very incautious investor who liked to speculate wildly and live extravagantly. After separating from her husband, she set up her own office and a steady stream of men regularly sought her investment advice.

So what happened to all that cash? She left her estate evenly divided between her son and daughter. Ned lived extravagantly, then left what remained to his sister. Sylvia, like her mother, kept her finances entirely separate from those of her husband. The couple had no children and when Sylvia died, she left all her fortune to a number of charities.

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