Grace Groner

Three Shares and 75 Years. 1909 to 2010.

Who she was

Grace Groner was a secretary at Abbott Laboratories in Lake Forest, Illinois. In 1935 she bought three shares of company stock for $60 each.

She never sold. She lived in a small cottage and shopped at rummage sales.

The compounding lesson

Through stock splits and reinvested dividends the three shares became more than 100,000 shares. When she died in 2010 at 100 they were worth about $7 million.

She left the money to Lake Forest College, her alma mater.

How she did it

One purchase, then dividends reinvested for 75 years. Nothing else.

It is the purest example of compounding on record.

What to copy

Concentration in one stock is a risk most people should not take. The holding period is the part to copy.

Reinvest dividends automatically and forget the account exists.