25 Comments

  1. What a great legacy to leave behind! If he’s spent all his money on fancy things, no one would even know his name. I can imagine how happy he must have been to make plans for all that money to go to charity. If it were me, I’d leave half to scholarship programs for high school students and half to pet charities.

  2. That is a great story. Donating that much money is great and is certainly something I wish to do in the future. Definitely shows that having a large net worth is possible with low income if you focus on a frugal lifestyle and save as much as you can.

  3. I love stories like this! It really is quite amazing what you can do if you start saving young. The trick is getting young people to realize the importance of saving. At this point, our savings will go to our kids! I hope we will have enough left to leave them a little better off than we are!

    • One thing that I didn’t get from the articles I read is, what happened to the other $2 million? He had $8 million and donated $6 million. Maybe the other two went to his family or taxes? I really don’t know.

  4. Pay yourself first. Yes I learned that a few years ago and do my best to live by it.
    One thing I have set up is an automatic deduction from my checking account to a savings account. To be honest, I do not know exactly how much is in there. The moneys are just tranfered every month and I do not see it but I know it is there as an emergancy fund. Not making that cool 8% but the money is liquid.

  5. You can’t really take it with you when you go. All that money is going somewhere, either you donate it or it goes to your family or the government.

  6. I wish someone had known about his fortune before his passing. I can only imagine how interesting it would have been to sit down and chat with the man – about everything in life. Just think about all the different things he saw throughout his life. And given his savings regimen, I have to believe he’d have some valuable lessons to teach all of us!

  7. That’s a pretty incredible story. Clearly his focus wasn’t on “being rich” even though he was very FI. It would have been great to get more backstory before he passed but I bet a lot of it is like you pointed out, consistent savings and compound interest.
    Drives home the point that you can save a lot just by putting a little bit away at a time.

  8. This is such an opportunity to educate people about how to grow wealth slowly but sure in a “boring” but effective way. Also very cool that he chose to be generous with his money.

  9. Amazing story Aldo and it was so nice of Mr Read to leave his money to good causes like that. I’m definitely a late saver. I really regret that but I’m trying now to make up for it. Since our debts were paid off, my husband and I still live more or less like we did before. Every spare penny is saved – at the moment it’s for a deposit for a house but then everything will go into retirement savings.

  10. Great information, and people should save more. Dont spend your money on useless things because you see it in commercials. Be smart with your money and you will be better off in the end!

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