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b'I am an avid reader. When I pass over something that grabs my attention, I bring it to you and give credit where it is due. Today I am giving credit to Paul Ng and his blog \\u201cThe Self in Investing\\u201d. He seems to take a Zen-like approach to the art of investing, and wrote an interesting post on multi-millionaire Grace Groner \\u2013 who was not active in the stock market, but yet left behind a $7 million stock-based gift to her alma mater.
\\xa0Grace Groner\\u2019s Inspiring Investment Style
I doubt that Grace Groner thought that \\u201ccapitalism is broken\\u201d or that \\u201cthe market is dead money\\u201d when she died in January at age 100 outside Chicago. Groner\\u2019s estate left a $7 million fortune grown from a small stake in Abbott Laboratories to her alma mater, suburban Lake Forest College. It was the largest gift in the school\\u2019s history.

How did she amass such a sum? After graduating in 1931, Groner began work as a secretary at Abbott Labs. A few years later, before the advent of 401(k)s, IRAs or any other prodding from the government, she bought three shares of Abbott, which cost her $180 \\u2013 about $2,900 in today\\u2019s dollars. Then she waited. She waited through the depths of the Great Depression and through a massive World War. She waited though the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Vietnam, and Korea, and the historic inflation of the 1970s. She waited through Republican and Democratic administrations, through periods of political liberalism and conservatism. She didn\\u2019t use Fibonacci retracements, high-frequency trading or advanced moving averages, but simply reinvested her dividends and never sold. Likewise, she is unlikely to have read Ben Graham or Taleb. If she did, she may have sold her stocks much earlier (because she was likely then to be an active investor).

After many splits, her three original shares became 129,000 shares worth roughly $7 million.

What permitted her to hold on to her investment over a lifetime\\u2026 was that she lived within her means. Groner was thrifty - perhaps from her experience with the Depression. Grace did not drive but walked around her town of Lake Forest, Ill. just outside Chicago. She owned a house that she had inherited from a friend. The one-bedroom place was stocked with the barest of possessions. She bought second-hand clothes at yard sales. She also enjoyed giving money to needy local residents, and many years ago she even established a scholarship program at Lake Forest College by donating $180,000.

Unlike investors who rang up debts during the 1990s tech frenzy and the 2000s real estate boom, Groner was thrifty, rarely splurging on purchases outside of travel and charity. Even after she became a millionaire, she didn\\u2019t live like one. In today\\u2019s populist culture, we too often paint \\u201cthe rich\\u201d as conniving Uncle Scrooges, dining on caviar and foie gras between dips in their bathtubs full of gold.

You know, Warren Buffet said \\u201cInvestment is simple but not easy.\\u201d Simple as Grace Groner made it, but difficult\\u2026 because of our human temperament!\\xa0 Most of us don\\u2019t want to wait 65 years for our money to compound into millions. Of course, Grace was fortunate to buy into a great business and, unlike most of us, was thrifty and lived well within her means. Most of us would have probably sold much sooner.
Market Looking Overbought? Get Back to the Basics
When the market appears to be selling off a bit, it\\u2019s always time to go back to the basics, and Paul Ng recommends looking back at Ben Graham who was also Warren Buffett\\u2019s mentor and teacher.

When the market is desolate \\u2013 everyone has lost money on everything. We are so consumed by mental anguish that it is difficult to make rational decisions. The future is seems so bleak and every piece of news added to your agony.

Nevertheless, the financial future is no more uncertain now than it used to be; in fact, it is far less uncertain than when the market was at its peak, the future seemed bright, and no one even imagined the disaster that would befall the market. Now,'