Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The World’s Greatest (Worst?) Misers

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

Have you ever known someone who was really cheap? Like they would wear clothes until disintegrated? Or they would never pick up the tab? Or maybe they are horrible tippers? Well, there is cheap and then there is cheap. Some people are so cheap that they appear to live in destitute poverty, even though they actually be quite wealthy. This is the world of misers. Learn more about some of the world’s most famous misers on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever known someone who is really cheap, like they would wear clothes until they disintegrated or they'd never pick up the tab, or maybe they're horrible tippers? Well, there's cheap and then there's cheap. Some people are so cheap, they appear to live in destitute poverty, even though they actually might be quite wealthy. And this is the world of the misers. Learn more about some of the world's most famous misers and their unbelievable stories on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thurline podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by the Athletic Brewing Company. Athletic Brewing brews delicious craft beers that just happen to be non-alcoholic. Athletic Brewing founders Bill and John are craft. craft beer lovers who wanted to cut back on alcohol without compromising on flavor.

But the interesting flavors that they loved in other craft beers just weren't available in non-alcoholic beer. So they brewed the beer that they wanted to drink. It turns out there are a lot of others looking to moderate or abstain, but are still thirsty for great beer. Order their amazing beers at athletic brewing.com. You can get free shipping on every order of two six packs or more, and you can save 15% by using the code everything 15 at checkout. Once again, that's athleticbrewing.com. Coupon code everything 15. To start this discussion, I should note that I'm not going to be talking about people who are just parsimonious. Just because you happen to be wealthy doesn't mean you need to live like rich you rich.

For example, Warren Buffett, who is worth over $100 billion, has lived in the same house for over a half a century, and it's worth only $500,000. And he famously only drives used cars. However, he does rent private jets to travel and otherwise lives like a normal person. Ingvard Comparad, who was the billionaire founder of IKEA, always flew coach and drove around in a Volvo. Likewise, Jay Paul Getty famously had a pay phone in his mansion and refused to pay ransom when his grandson was kidnapped. He did eventually agree to loan his son money for the ransom, but then charged him interest on the loan. These people might have been frugal, but they weren't misers. What I'm talking about are the extreme cases of people who would go for,

far, far out of their way to save an insignificant amount of money, yet were so rich that it really made no sense to do so. These people were so cheap that it was probably pathological. The first person from history that I'll highlight is one of the inspirations for the character Ebenezer Scrooge, John Elwis. Elwis was an 18th century miser, and believe it or not, a member of the British Parliament. He inherited 100,000 pounds from his parents and then later inherited a quarter million pounds from his uncle. The present-day value of his estate would have been somewhere around $36 million. His uncle, who raised him for much of his youth, was also a miser, and they would often sit at night, sharing a single glass of wine, complaining about how wasteful other people were.

As an adult, he would go to bed when the sunset, so he didn't have to spend money on candles. Rather than riding a coach, he would walk in the rain, and then he would just sit in wet clothes rather than build a fire, because he would have to pay for wood. He wore shabby clothes with holes in them, and it made him look like a beggar. People would often give him money when he walked down the street. Wigs were in style at the time, and he once found one that someone threw away in a bush, and he wore it for weeks. He once came across a rotting sheep, and he took it home and managed to make meals for two weeks. He would complain about birds robbing him of hay from his field.

He once injured both legs walking home and had to go to the doctor. He had only one of his legs treated, then bet the doctor. the value of the treatment that the untreated leg would heal faster. He won the bet and paid nothing. He owned several estates, but refused to spend money on upkeep or repairs on any of them. For someone who was so paranoid about spending money, he lent it freely, however, to other aristocrats and often played cards for thousands of pounds. It's believed he only had a single pair of clothes, which he slept in as well. He died on November 26, 1789, in bed, wearing his street clothes. He is claimed to a only spent the equivalent of $4,000 a year on himself.

The next great miser is another Englishman who was a contemporary with Elwis, Daniel Dancer. Dancer wasn't as wealthy as Elwis, but he did have 80 acres of land, which would have made him far above average in 18th century England. When he inherited his parents' farm, he immediately set about doing nothing with the land, literally nothing. He refused to spend the money required to buy seeds and to cultivate the land. He lived with a sister, and they would eat a single meal a day, all with the week's food prepared in advance on Sunday. When his sister became ill, he refused to pay for a doctor saying, quote, if the old girl was going to die, the doctors couldn't save her anyhow. Unquote. He was so paranoid of being robbed that he permanently

locked the door to his home and it would enter via an upper story window by a ladder. He would then pull the ladder up behind him once inside. His one extravagance was that every year, whether he needed to or not, he would buy a new shirt. A neighbor accused his dog of attacking his sheep. Dancer did the cheapest thing possible. He took his dog to the town blacksmith and had its teeth removed. However, the greatest miser of them all, and the person who was listed in the Guinness Book of World's Records as being the greatest miser, has to be Hedy Green.

Hedy lived in New York City during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was born a Quaker, which probably influenced her spending and lifestyle habits. Her father owned a whaling fleet in New Bedford, Massachusetts. and when he died in 1865, he left Hetty $6 million. She later received another $1 million from her aunt. In both of these inheritances, most of the money was in a trust which Hetty couldn't control. She simply received income. I mention this because before we get into Hetty the Miser, we have to talk about

Hetty, the investor. While Hetty did inherit a lot of money, she didn't sit on it. She was extremely shrewd and one of the top stock investors in the United States in the 19th century. Hedy was a contrarian investor. She described her investment strategy as follows. Quote, I buy when things are low and no one wants them. I keep them until they go up and people are crazy to get them.

That is, I believe, the secret of all successful businesses, unquote. Her strategy wasn't all that different from modern day Warren Buffett. Light Buffett, her buy-and-hold approach paid off handsomely. She wasn't just lucky. She did an incredible amount of research before investing in something. She became known as the Queen of Wall Street, and later the witch of Wall Street, due to always wearing a black dress. In Ken Fisher's 2007 book, A Hundred Minds That Made the Market, he stated that Hetty was one of the best investors of the Gilded Age, and her performance was far better in the long run than other high-profile investors who had spectacular gains, but eventually went bankrupt.

When Hetty got married, her husband had his own wealth, but it was much less than Hetty had. She required him to sign an early version of a prenuptial agreement before the wedding. What really made Hetty famous wasn't her investing acumen, however, which was considerable, but rather her thriftiness. The stories of her penny pinching are legendary, and it's hard to separate the fact from the fiction. Hetty didn't live in a house that she owned. She spent her life after her husband died in boarding houses. She owned a single black dress that she wore every day.

She asked her cleaning woman only to wash the dirty parts of the dress on the hemline to save money on soap. She didn't have an office. Rather, she used a room at the bank where she held much of her money. The rumor was she only ate oatmeal, which was heated on the radiator at the bank. She personally never used heat or hot water, as it cost too much money. Supposedly, she once spent an entire evening trying to find a two-cent stamp that she lost. When her son was injured, she took him to a free clinic for the poor waiting for him to get admitted. That delay eventually resulted in him losing his leg. Part of her frugretion came from not wanting to pay property taxes, which is why she didn't own a home or an office.

Unlike other misers, Hetty wasn't a recluse. She gave interviews to the media occasionally and was always interacting with people. Although most people didn't know it, she secretly gave sizable sums of money to various charities. She insisted that charities should be done anonymously and not for self-aggrandizement. She also personally bailed out the city of New York several times extending it loans. During the panic of 1907, she cut a check for $1.1 million to the city. It is estimated that her total net worth in today's inflation-indjusted currency would have been about $5.3 billion. Almost all of that was earned herself through her investing. She was unquestionably the richest woman in the world when she died in 1916. So if you're the person

your friends call cheap or a skinflint, the next time you're out, raise a glass of warm water with a ketchup packet to the greatest cheap skates of all time. John Elvis, Daniel Dancer, and Hetty Green. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. Today's five-star review comes from listener Gold Deer Nine on Apple

Podcasts in Canada. They write, Love it. I love these short stories and the fun topics. Thank you very much, Goldier-9. As I've noted before, if you keep listening, I'll keep making them. Remember, you two can have your review read on the show. Just leave a review on sites such as Apple Podcasts or Podjaser.