While Henrietta Green (above) was the richest woman in America during the first decade of the 20th century, she was legendary for being extremely tight with her fortune. It was well noted that Henrietta's son lost a leg because she refused to pay for proper medical treatment until it was too late. It takes many, many years in order to properly build wealth. Watching your pennies, cutting corners on expenses, and spending and investing wisely is a great start to propelling wealth over the long haul. While the secret to building wealth is not such a mystery, one woman over a century ago became legendary for being way too tight with her money. On this day in 1916, Henrietta Howland Green (a.k.a. the "Witch of Wall Street") dies in New York City as the richest woman in America with an estate worth over $100 million. She was 80 years old and miserly to the very end. Despite her enormous wealth, she lived the last two decades of her life in a tiny apartment in Hoboken, dressed shabbily, haggled with shopkeepers, and avoided medical treatment other than what she got at charity clinics. Her practice of maintaining a large pool of liquid assets for lending allowed her not only to survive the panic of 1907 but to thrive. Many investors at the time of the panic were highly grateful to Green and found themselves in debt to her.
To read more about the highly unusual but fascinating story of Henrietta Green and the fortune she built, click here.
