Ronald Read was a janitor and gas station attendant who lived in Vermont.
A World War II vet, he was the first in his family to graduate from high school. He drove a used Toyota Yaris and lived a frugal lifestyle.
But when he died in 2014, he left $6 million to charity and $2 million to his family.
Anne Scheiber was an IRS auditor. She never made more than $4,000 per year. Upon her death in 1995, she donated a $22 million fortune to her two favorite colleges.
These aren’t the millionaires who have become household names. But these “secret millionaires” were able to grow their humble earnings into sizable wealth… and live on their own terms until their last days.
At the Daily, we don’t believe in the messaging Wall Street sells you: that you have to already be rich to get rich.
There are ways for anyone to secure financial independence – and then some.
And today, we’ll show you how a secret to immense riches can help you retire in safety and wealth.
Retiring Rich Doesn’t Require Luck
Ronald Read and Anne Scheiber didn’t get lucky by buying Amazon or Apple early… They didn’t master speculative options or day trading… Nor did they inherit a lot of money.
So how did they get richer than 98.5% of Americans?
According to the Wall Street Journal, Read died owning 95 stocks. But they weren’t rock-star growth and tech stocks like Amazon.
Just look at some of the companies he owned:
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Procter & Gamble
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JPMorgan Chase
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General Electric
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Dow Chemical
His biggest holdings were Smucker’s, CVS Health, and Johnson & Johnson.
These large, steady companies are hardly the kind you’d imagine can make you rich… But they can.
As for Scheiber, when she retired in 1947, she started earning a $3,100 annual pension. And having worked for the IRS, she knew how much money could be preserved when you don’t have to pay capital gains taxes.
That’s why she bought and held blue-chip stocks, just like Read did, for nearly 50 years. Starting with $5,000 in her portfolio, she grew that to $22 million.
You might think these stories of the past only applied to that time. But you can still replicate that level of success today…
Let’s consider the situation of three hypothetical investors.
The first buys the S&P 500, which historically earns 7% inflation-adjusted returns.
The second buys dividend growth blue-chips and earns 10.5% annual returns after inflation.
And the third combines high-yield dividend growth blue-chips with the best hyper-growth stocks and earns a 12.5% annual return. (This is the strategy we recommend to our younger subscribers.)
Take a look at how their finances would have fared over the long term based on their chosen strategies…
(Source: FactSet, Dave Ramsey Investment Calculator.)
Over 40 years, starting at age 30 and retiring at 70, even the S&P 500’s historical inflation-adjusted returns get you 16x your money.
Dividend growth blue-chips get you 66x, about four times more.
Meanwhile, combining yield and hyper-growth hands you 145x your money.
With those kinds of returns, you don’t have to invest a lot of money today for it to compound into massive returns.
And here’s the best part…
You can put together a portfolio today that can help you do just that.
Build Your Own Dividend Portfolio
You want to make sure you have a portfolio that’s diversified across various assets to withstand market crashes. That makes it much less likely to experience a bear market than the S&P 500.
So along with dividend-growth companies like the ones mentioned above, you also want to have some exposure to bonds and alternative investments like managed futures.
Based on our research, a well-balanced portfolio like this can generate returns like this…
(Source: FactSet, Dave Ramsey Investment Calculator.)
And you don’t need to have 50 years ahead of you to reach your retirement goals.
Based on our calculations, even if you start investing at 40 or even 50, you too can retire a “secret millionaire” just like Ronald Read or Anne Scheiber.
You don’t have to live like a monk and save every penny to retire rich. You just need the world’s best companies working hard for you so that one day, you won’t have to work hard yourself.
Even if you’ve made financial mistakes that torpedoed your retirement portfolio, the right investments can help you make it all back – and then some.
Palm Beach Research Group