Heard about the secret millionaire of Lake Forest, Illinois? I’ll assume not and recap. Grace Groner was born in 1909 and graduated from Lake Forest College in 1931, just about the worst year of the 20th Century to enter the job market. Luckily for her, she landed a position as a secretary at the then 
obscure firm Abbott Laboratories. She was a secretary there her entire career, retiring at age 65 in 1974. She never married and lived modestly.
So far, it’s a story that could be called poignantly mundane. But add in a few more facts and it transforms into a personal finance parable that will be repeated, and probably distorted, for some time to come.
In 1935 Groner bought three shares of her employer’s stock. From that day on, she reinvested the dividends and never sold a share. She past passed away this January, having reached 100. Her estate, including what is now a $7 million position in Abbott, was left to her alma mater, Lake Forest College.
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Yesterday the US Postal Service put out a press release Postal Service Outlines 10-Year Plan to Address Declining Revenue, Volume: Seeks Flexibility on Operations, Delivery; Possible 2011 Price Increase.
For fans of the good old USPS (there must be a few out there) it is grim reading. Mail volume is projected to decrease from 177 billion items in 2009 to just 150 billion by 2020. On its present course, the USPS is projected to lose a total of $238 billion over the next decade, a number that makes the shortfalls in Detroit seem relatively manageable.
The AP story on this was headlined Postal Service’s emerging model: Never on Saturday. The media seems to believe that delivery six days a week is a hot button of some kind. Personally, I don’t care very much. Deliver my mail three days a week if you like. Last year Gallup found 66% of Americans favor dropping Saturday to save money.
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Saturday’s Wall Street Journal carried a column by Jason Zweig, Brokers Win, Investors Lose Key Reform which lamented the loss of a provision in a bill now "oozing" through the Senate that would have made stockbrokers, insurance agents, and certain other financial salesmen into fiduciaries.
On the remote chance that the term fiduciary does not ring any bells, let me explain. Investment advisors and managers, including, for example, mutual fund companies, are fiduciaries. They are required to put their clients’ interests first, which basically means watching over client money as they would their own. Of course, there are limits to this, nobody would expect a mutual fund company to lower fees out of fiduciary responsibility, but by and large this works and consumers get what they expect from the relationship.
At the opposite end of the trust spectrum are ordinary salesmen and the ordinary profit-maximizing companies for which they work. Of course, the great majority of people and firms we do business with fall into this category. We know this and think nothing of it. When the waiter suggests dessert, nobody indignantly objects he is not putting the interests of the diners ahead of that of his employer. Ditto for the salesgirl at the mall who says you look great in those pants. Again, this system works and consumers get what they expect.
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Continuing a long tradition that dates back four weeks, I’m using this last day of the week and month to round up a few things I’ve found lately on the interwebs that deserve comment but not whole posts.
Kiyosaki in Canada
The Consumerist asked the other day Is Rich Dad Robert Kiyosaki Getting Rich Off Suckers? Excellent question. Let’s examine it logically.
1. Kiyosaki is rich.
2. What he does for a living is sell books and seminars.
3. Those books and seminars are basically worthless.
4. Purchasers of those books and seminars are therefore suckers.
5. Ergo, Kiyosaki has gotten rich off suckers.
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If there is one theme that I cannot resist writing about, it is the sharing of the alleged secrets of millionaires. Smart Money recently gave us a typically insipid 
example with 10 Things Millionaires Won’t Tell You. (Credit where credit is due, I found it via Free Money Finance.)
I am not sure if I have said this unequivocally before, but I am a millionaire. So, using the level of scientific inquiry typical of Smart Money and its ilk, let’s validate their secrets using this sample of one.
1. “You may think I’m rich, but I don’t.”
The "I don’t" part is basically true, but I’m not so sure about the "you may think I’m rich" part. When you get down to it, a million dollars ain’t really that much money. Something like 1 in 16 US households has a net worth north of a million. Equating millionaire with rich made sense a hundred years ago, but today I think the lifestyle most would associate with rich would start at around $10 million in net worth.
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obscure firm Abbott Laboratories. She was a secretary there her entire career, retiring at age 65 in 1974. She never married and lived modestly.
Frugality, Media | Frank Curmudgeon | 
March 9, 2010 12:59 pm | 
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