20 Millionaires Who Lived Shockingly Cheap Lives

John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil and the world’s first officially recognized billionaire in 1916, was raised in a severe Baptist household in Cleveland where wasting even a single item was considered a sin. He would iron out old pieces of wrapping paper so he could use them again, take apart strings from packages and save them for reuse, and meticulously record all his purchases in a book known as Ledger A. The wealthiest man on the planet could not let go of the penny.

Hetty Green, known as “the Witch of Wall Street” for her dominant hold on the railroad and real estate industries in Gilded Age New York, came from a devout Quaker family. Refusing to pay property tax, she never owned a home. She lived for years in unheated boarding houses and wore one black dress until it fell apart. She washed only the hem that dragged along the floor. Meanwhile, her estate was worth between $100 million and $200 million. Newspaper accounts claimed that she let her son’s leg rot to save the doctor’s fee, but biographers say that she sought private physicians once home remedies had failed.

In 1957, Fortune magazine named J. Paul Getty the richest private citizen in the world, with a fortune near $1 billion. And he wasn’t about to let that money go to waste. After finding out that guests and tradesmen were running up expensive transatlantic calls on his private lines, he locked the phones up and put in a payphone instead. He was also known to wash his own clothes. If there was a nickel involved, Getty wanted a say in whether or not it got spent.

“Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt, builder of the New York Central railroad network, died in 1877 with a net worth of more than $100 million (more money than was held in the U.S. Treasury). Brought up working on the New York Harbor ferries, he dwelled for many years in a Manhattan row house, dined on vegetable soup, and rode around in a horse-drawn carriage. It was his descendants, not he, who lived grandly in palaces like The Breakers.

In 1848, John Jacob Astor, a German-born fur trader who had built a near-monopoly on the fur trade and bought up much of Manhattan, died worth about $20 million, nearly 1% of the nation’s economy. Astor never let go of the habits of his younger years. He walked instead of paying a coach fare, wore plain suits, and audited trifling office expenses to the penny.

The British MP John Elwes grew his fortune to more than £500,000. When his uncle, Sir Harvey Elwes, died in 1763, he left him about £250,000, which he increased through property acquisitions and by living frugally. He was so poor-looking that people would throw coppers in his hand as they passed him. He kept cold, dark houses so he could avoid the cost of buying coal or candles. Yet he gave money away to his friends, and he didn’t insist that they repay it. Charles Dickens drew on Elwes and other men of his sort to create Ebenezer Scrooge.

James “Jemmy” Wood, who owned the Gloucester Old Bank, one of the UK’s longest-established private banks, ran it from a tiny office in the corner of a drapery shop, employing just two clerks. Wood dressed in shabby, antique clothing and walked everywhere, picking up fallen pieces of coal and wood from the gutter to burn in the stove that heated his house. One newspaper hailed him as the first commoner millionaire in Britain. When he died in 1836, he was worth £900,000. His will sparked legal battles for years.

In 1957, Fortune magazine named Haroldson Lafayette “H. L.” Hunt, the founder of Hunt Oil Company in Dallas, Texas, the second-richest man in America, worth more than $400 million. You wouldn’t know it from his appearance or lifestyle. Hunt carried his lunch to the office in a brown paper bag, cut his own hair, and drove an old Plymouth car. He parked blocks away from the office instead of paying for a parking space. Fifty cents was still 50 cents to H. L. Hunt.

Daniel Keith Ludwig, an American shipping magnate who pioneered the modern oil supertanker through his company National Bulk Carriers, was already worth over $1 billion by the mid-1950s. Yet he continued to fly economy class, walk to his New York office, and work in a spartan office without decorations. He also wore cheap suits and rarely granted interviews to the press. The jet age was here. Ludwig simply hadn’t purchased a first-class ticket.

In the mid-1800s, George Peabody, an American-born merchant banker in London considered to be the father of modern Anglo-American philanthropy, made a fortune of over $10 million. Peabody lived modestly, renting a small room rather than keeping a house. He wore the same coat for years until it became frayed. He rarely hired a coach, even in London rain, preferring to walk instead. The money he didn’t spend on coaches he spent elsewhere. For example, he gave away more than $8 million for London social housing and American schools.

Wall Street financier and railroad tycoon Russell Sage, who teamed up with another speculator, Jay Gould, amassed a $70 million fortune as one of the top moneylenders in New York during the late 19th century. Sage dressed in worn-out clothes, including cheap suits that he wore until the fabric broke down. He walked to his office rather than pay a horsecar fare and picked paper clips, pins, and scraps of paper off the floor. Upon his death in 1906, his wife, Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage, gave the whole fortune away to start a foundation for social reform.

Daniel Dancer was an English landowner living at Harrow Weald who came by an 80-acre meadow estate that brought in over £3,000 a year, which was a great deal of money for the 18th century. Yet he would not spend a penny of it on himself. He bound his legs in hay instead of buying leather boots, tied rags together for a coat, and washed his face with wet sand rather than soap. He ate a single meal of cold scraps per day and allowed his house to crumble around him.

Nicholas Longworth, a Cincinnati lawyer and real estate magnate, pioneered commercial Catawba grape winemaking in the early 1800s. He built a $15 million estate largely by taking land instead of cash for his legal fees, making him one of America’s highest individual taxpayers. He wore unfashionable, shabby clothing, including a battered slouch hat. His appearance was so disheveled that pedestrians on the street would attempt to push coins into his hands. In contrast, he routinely donated funds to actual beggars he encountered.

John McDonogh, a New Orleans merchant who was the largest private landowner in the city with a fortune of over $2 million, had known only a brief period of youthful excess. Then he had a religious awakening that changed him completely, selling off his fine furniture and carriages. For the next 40 years he kept every penny of his income, dressed in shabby, outmoded clothing, and rode an old mule or walked to save the cost of a ferry ride.

Daniel Drew was a Wall Street speculator and once a cattle driver. The man who popularized the phrase “watered stock” reached his peak with a $15 million fortune in the 1860s, but he lived modestly, wearing tattered clothes and carrying his papers in a cloth handkerchief rather than a briefcase. He used some of his wealth to establish Drew Theological Seminary. But unlike the rest of these men, Drew’s thriftiness did not prevent his downfall. The panics of the 1870s ruined him, and he died bankrupt in 1879.

Asa Griggs Candler, the Atlanta businessman, purchased the Coca-Cola recipe from Dr. John Pemberton, a local pharmacist, in 1888 for $2,300. He turned it into one of the world’s largest beverage companies and became worth more than $50 million. But his Methodism kept him grounded in his beliefs about frugality. He dressed simply, walked to work every day, and continued to ride in a simple horse-drawn carriage even after cars were available. He donated millions of dollars of his wealth to help fund Emory and the hospitals of Atlanta.

Stephen Girard, a Philadelphia merchant and banker of French extraction shaped by Philadelphia’s Quaker-influenced thrift, was worth $7.5 million when he died. When the War of 1812 threatened to bankrupt the United States, he used his own funds to purchase virtually the entire unsold federal war bond offering and saved the nation from financial disaster. Yet he lived in a small townhouse and wore old-fashioned coats of plain cloth. He had previously devoted himself to nursing the victims of a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia and ultimately endowed his wealth to establish Girard College for orphans.

By the time Charles Pratt, a pioneer in the oil industry who established Astral Oil and later became a partner in Standard Oil, passed away in 1891, he had amassed over $20 million. True to his Congregationalist beliefs that emphasized modesty in life, he never indulged in Manhattan high society. Instead, he lived quietly and humbly in his Brooklyn home and walked to his office each morning. He donated his wealth to establish the Pratt Institute in 1887, which provided lower-income individuals with inexpensive training in the arts and technical fields.

The Boston cloth merchant Amos Lawrence, who amassed one of the first industrial fortunes in New England, lived by Puritan principles. He recorded all expenses in a diary, dressed modestly, and ate frugally. He donated $630,000 from his personal fortune for educational purposes over his lifetime, including grants to Williams College and Lawrence University.

James Lick came to San Francisco in 1848 with $30,000 in gold. He purchased raw, unbuilt land, which eventually became worth approximately $3 million when he died. The whole amount was spent only after his death. While alive, Lick lived in an unheated, drafty shanty made out of wood. He wore rags held together with patches, and slept on a mattress filled with dried leaves from his orchard. When Lick died, his fortune went toward the construction of the Lick Observatory, which was erected on top of Mount Hamilton in his memory.

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