Beyond the Billionaires: Meet the Magnificent Seven Investors You've Never Heard Of

We can all name more than a few billionaires -- such as Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Some billionaires -- like Buffett and his business partner Charlie Munger -- have been great investors.

Lots of great investors are not billionaires, though. In fact, many extremely impressive investors are or have been ordinary people like us -- employed as teachers, secretaries, janitors, etc. And many of them have become millionaires, just like we can if we invest sensibly and diligently.

Image source: Getty Images.

Here are seven magnificent investors to know:

• Genesio Morlacci: Morlacci lived to 102 and worked as a dry cleaner and part-time janitor. He was able to bequeath $2.3 million to Montana's University of Great Falls because he had been a longtime investor. Living to 102 is part of how he amassed so much, and so is how he invested -- in real estate, bonds, and a handful of stocks.
• The Reynolds family: Gilmore and Golda Reynolds, who lived in a small Indiana town, ended up leaving more than $22 million to the town after they died. Their wealth came in part from investing, which they did with gusto, reportedly poring over newspapers and making charts of stocks.
• Thomas Drey Jr.: Drey was a schoolteacher who received a small inheritance from his father, who was a reporter and editor at The Boston Globe, and actively invested the money. He spent a lot of time studying stocks and investing, largely at the Boston Public Library, and upon his death, he left $6.8 million to the library.
• Gladys Holm: When Holm died in 1997, a headline read "Retired $15,000-a-Year Secretary Leaves Hospital $18 Million for Research." How did she do it? With investments in the stock market. Her boss had suggested she invest excess funds in stocks, and she did so, with great results. She also owned shares of her employer, a healthcare company that prospered and then got bought out.
• Ronald Read: A Vermonter who worked as a janitor and a gas station attendant, Read lived frugally and quietly invested his money. According to The Wall Street Journal, when he died in 2014 he owned at least 95 different stocks, including JPMorgan Chase, CVS Health, and Procter & Gamble, and reportedly collected $20,000 monthly in dividends from them. Read donated $6 million to his local library and hospital.
• Grace Groner: Groner worked as a secretary at Abbott Labs for 43 years. She bought three shares of Abbott stock for $180 in 1931 and never sold them, going on to buy and hold many other stocks. She died in 2010 at 100, donating $7 million to Lake Forest College.
• Sylvia Bloom: Bloom was also a secretary, at a major law firm, and had amassed more than $9 million by the time she died at 96 in 2016. As a secretary many years ago, she placed stock trade orders for her boss, and when doing so, often also bought or sold the same stock in her own account.

How to succeed like these ordinary millionaires

There are unassuming millionaires all around us. You may be able to achieve what the folks above did, yourself, becoming a millionaire, too. Here's how:

• Invest in the stock market. You don't have to receive stock tips from your boss, either. Simply sticking with a low-fee index fund can be all you need, as long as you keep adding money to it.
• Favor dividend-paying stocks. You can prosper well without dividends, but dividend payers are generally more established and reliable growers, and they tend to perform well as stocks, too, while generating regular cash infusions that you can invest in more stock.
• Live below your means. Most or all of these people lived quite frugally. They might have splurged now and then on a trip or a new car, but they generally socked away as much as they could -- for decades.
• Stick to your plan. To do really well in stocks, you should aim to stick with it for decades. Don't give up when there's an inevitable stock market pullback, and don't try risky ways of getting rich, such as by buying lots of lottery tickets.
• Live a very long life. This strategy is largely out of our control, but the longer you live, the more you might amass, as the table below shows. And many of the millionaires above lived well into their 90s or beyond.

Data source: author.

Great wealth is within reach for many of us -- and at a minimum, you can probably greatly enhance your future financial security by investing in stocks for the long run.