Anne Scheiber

Anne Scheiber
Born	1 10, 1893
Birthplace	New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	Template:Death date and age
Nationality	American
Occupation	IRS auditor, investor
Employer	Internal Revenue Service
Known for	Turning $5,000 into $22 million through long-term investing; bequeathing her fortune to Yeshiva University

Anne Scheiber (October 1, 1893 – January 9, 1995) was an American Internal Revenue Service (IRS) auditor and investor who, over the course of a 51-year retirement, transformed a modest $5,000 nest egg into a fortune of approximately $22 million. She accomplished this through a disciplined buy-and-hold investment strategy focused on dividend-paying stocks, without the use of options, leverage, or speculative techniques. Scheiber never earned a salary of more than $4,000 per year during her 23-year career at the IRS, never received a promotion, and lived frugally in a rent-controlled apartment in New York City for decades. Upon her death at the age of 101, Scheiber surprised the world by bequeathing her entire $22 million estate to Yeshiva University, specifically to fund scholarships for women at Stern College for Women who were accepted into the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Her story has become one of the most frequently cited examples of the power of compound interest, patience, and long-term dividend reinvestment in the history of personal finance.

Early Life

Anne Scheiber was born on October 1, 1893, in New York City. She grew up in an era when professional opportunities for women were severely limited, and the barriers she encountered throughout her working life would later shape both her investment philosophy and her philanthropic decisions. Scheiber came from a modest background and was one of several siblings. Her brother was an accountant, and it was partly through observing his career and the financial world around her that she developed an early interest in money management and taxation.

Details of Scheiber's childhood and family life remain sparse in the public record, consistent with the intensely private nature she maintained throughout her life. What is known is that she grew up in New York City during a period of significant social and economic change, including the expansion of the federal government and the establishment of the modern income tax system following the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913. These developments would directly shape her professional career, as the newly created federal income tax necessitated a growing workforce of auditors and examiners at the Internal Revenue Service.

Scheiber's early years were marked by the kind of thrift and self-reliance that would later define her investment approach. Growing up in a working-class environment, she learned to live within her means—a discipline she maintained with remarkable consistency for over a century of life.

Career

Internal Revenue Service

Scheiber spent 23 years working as an auditor for the Internal Revenue Service. During her tenure, she never earned a salary exceeding $4,000 per year and never received a single promotion despite her competence and longevity in the role. The lack of advancement has been attributed by multiple sources to the gender discrimination that was pervasive in the federal workforce during the early and mid-twentieth century. Women in government agencies routinely faced barriers to promotion and pay increases, and Scheiber's experience was emblematic of these systemic inequities.

Despite these professional frustrations, Scheiber's work at the IRS provided her with a unique and consequential education. As an auditor, she spent years examining the tax returns of wealthy Americans, gaining firsthand insight into how fortunes were built, maintained, and—in some cases—lost. She observed the investment strategies of the affluent, studied corporate financial statements, and developed a sophisticated understanding of how the tax code affected investment returns. This knowledge would prove instrumental when she began managing her own portfolio.

Scheiber retired from the IRS in 1944 at the age of 51. By the time she left government service, she had accumulated approximately $5,000 in savings—a sum that, while not trivial for a woman of her income level, was far from extraordinary. She also had a small IRS pension. It was with these limited financial resources that she embarked on what would become one of the most remarkable individual investment careers in American history.

Investment Strategy

After retiring in 1944, Scheiber devoted herself full-time to managing her investment portfolio, a pursuit she would continue for the next 51 years until her death in 1995. Her approach was built on several core principles that, while straightforward in concept, required extraordinary patience and discipline to execute over half a century.

Buy and hold. Scheiber's foundational strategy was to purchase shares of high-quality companies and hold them for extremely long periods, often decades. She avoided the temptation to trade frequently, recognizing that transaction costs and taxes eroded returns over time. Her experience at the IRS had given her a deep appreciation for the impact of capital gains taxes, and she structured her portfolio to minimize taxable events by simply not selling. This tax-efficient approach allowed her gains to compound largely uninterrupted by tax obligations.

Dividend reinvestment. A central element of Scheiber's strategy was the reinvestment of dividends. Rather than spending the income generated by her stock holdings, she systematically reinvested dividends back into additional shares. Over time, this reinvestment created a powerful compounding effect. As her share count grew, so did her dividend income, which in turn purchased more shares, creating an accelerating cycle of wealth accumulation.

Focus on quality companies. Scheiber invested in well-known, established companies with strong brands and reliable earnings. Her portfolio included major blue-chip stocks and well-known consumer brands. She favored companies that she understood and that had demonstrated consistent performance over long periods. By concentrating on companies with durable competitive advantages, she reduced the risk of catastrophic losses that could have derailed her long-term compounding.

No leverage or speculation. Scheiber did not use margin, options, or any form of leverage in her investment approach. She did not chase speculative investments or attempt to time the market. Her strategy required no special connections, no insider information, and no sophisticated financial instruments—just patience, discipline, and time.

Tax efficiency. Having spent 23 years auditing tax returns, Scheiber understood the tax code better than most professional investors. She recognized that unrealized capital gains were not taxed, and that holding investments for long periods deferred tax liabilities indefinitely. This understanding informed her reluctance to sell, even when positions had appreciated significantly. The result was a portfolio that grew largely free of the tax drag that diminishes the returns of more active investors.

Portfolio Performance

The results of Scheiber's approach were extraordinary by any measure. Starting with approximately $5,000 in 1944, her portfolio grew to an estimated $22 million by the time of her death in January 1995. This represented an annualized return that has been compared favorably to the performance of professional money managers and even to that of Warren Buffett, one of the most celebrated investors in history. Multiple financial commentators have noted that Scheiber's compound annual growth rate over her 51-year investment horizon placed her in rarefied company among individual investors.

Her success was achieved during a period that included significant market turbulence, including the post-World War II adjustment, various recessions, the stagflation of the 1970s, the crash of 1987, and numerous other periods of market volatility. Scheiber's ability to hold through these downturns without panic-selling was a critical factor in her long-term results. Her buy-and-hold discipline meant that she captured the full benefit of subsequent market recoveries, while investors who sold during downturns often locked in losses and missed the rebounds.

Life During Retirement

Throughout her five decades of retirement, Scheiber lived with extreme frugality. She resided in a small, rent-controlled apartment in New York City, which she reportedly rarely left in her later years. She lived alone and had few social connections. Neighbors and acquaintances had no inkling of the vast fortune she had accumulated. She wore old clothes, rarely spent money on luxuries, and maintained a lifestyle that gave no outward indication of her wealth.

Scheiber's frugality was not merely a personality quirk but an integral component of her investment strategy. By keeping her living expenses to an absolute minimum, she was able to reinvest virtually all of her dividend income rather than spending it on consumption. This discipline, maintained consistently over half a century, was a significant driver of her portfolio's growth. The difference between spending dividends and reinvesting them, compounded over 51 years, amounted to millions of dollars.

Her reclusive lifestyle also reflected deeper personal experiences. Scheiber harbored lasting resentment over the discrimination she had faced at the IRS, where she believed she had been denied promotions because she was a woman and Jewish. These experiences contributed to a general distrust of institutions and a determination to achieve financial independence entirely on her own terms. She reportedly had little contact with family members in her later years and conducted her financial affairs with near-total secrecy.

Personal Life

Anne Scheiber never married and had no children. She lived alone in her rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for decades. She was described by those who encountered her as intensely private and reclusive, particularly in the final years of her life.

Scheiber's personal life was shaped in significant ways by the professional discrimination she experienced. She felt strongly that she had been overlooked and underpaid at the IRS because of her gender and her Jewish heritage, and this sense of injustice informed both her determination to build wealth independently and her ultimate decision to direct her fortune toward scholarships for women.

She was known to spend considerable time reading financial reports and tracking her investments. Her apartment, modest in all other respects, contained stacks of financial documents and records related to her portfolio. Despite her wealth, she did not employ a financial advisor or portfolio manager, preferring to make all investment decisions herself.

Scheiber lived to the age of 101, dying on January 9, 1995. Her longevity was itself a factor in her investment success, as it provided an unusually long time horizon over which the power of compounding could operate.

Philanthropy

The most dramatic revelation of Anne Scheiber's life came after her death. When her will was read, it was discovered that she had bequeathed her entire estate—approximately $22 million—to Yeshiva University. The bequest was directed specifically to fund scholarships for women at Stern College for Women who had been accepted into the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

The gift stunned Yeshiva University officials, who had no prior relationship with Scheiber and had not been aware of her existence. Scheiber had never attended Yeshiva University, nor had she been involved with the institution in any capacity during her lifetime. Her connection to the university appears to have been facilitated by Benjamin Clark, a lawyer and financial advisor who was associated with Yeshiva University and who had become acquainted with Scheiber in her later years.

Scheiber's decision to direct her fortune toward scholarships for women reflected her own experiences with gender discrimination. Having been denied advancement throughout her career because of her gender, she chose to use her wealth to help ensure that future generations of women would have access to educational and professional opportunities that had been denied to her.

The Scheiber scholarships have had a substantial and lasting impact at Yeshiva University. By 2007, the fund was supporting multiple students annually. Helen Nissim of Los Angeles was among the Stern College graduates who benefited from the Scheiber scholarship fund, receiving support for her medical school education at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The scholarships have continued to grow in value and reach, fulfilling Scheiber's intention of providing meaningful financial assistance to women pursuing careers in medicine.

Recognition

Although Scheiber was virtually unknown during her lifetime, her story gained significant public attention following her death and the disclosure of her bequest to Yeshiva University. A December 1995 article in The New York Times brought her story to national attention, detailing the remarkable contrast between her modest lifestyle and her enormous fortune. People magazine also profiled Scheiber, describing her as an "angel in disguise."

In the years since her death, Scheiber has become one of the most frequently cited examples in personal finance literature of what can be achieved through disciplined, long-term investing. Her story appears regularly in articles, books, and financial education materials as an illustration of the power of compound interest, dividend reinvestment, and the buy-and-hold strategy.

Financial commentators have drawn comparisons between Scheiber's returns and those of Warren Buffett, noting that her compound annual growth rate over 51 years was competitive with one of the most celebrated professional investors in history. While such comparisons involve different starting points, portfolio sizes, and market conditions, they underscore the exceptional nature of Scheiber's achievement as an individual, self-directed investor working without professional assistance or institutional resources.

Her story has also been cited in discussions of gender discrimination in the workplace, as her career at the IRS exemplified the barriers that women faced in mid-twentieth-century America. The fact that she channeled her fortune into scholarships for women has given her story an additional dimension of significance beyond its financial implications.

Legacy

Anne Scheiber's legacy operates on multiple levels. In the realm of personal finance, she has become an enduring symbol of the principle that extraordinary wealth can be built through ordinary means—patience, discipline, frugality, and the systematic reinvestment of returns over long periods. Her story is cited by financial advisors, investment educators, and authors as evidence that successful investing does not require exceptional income, professional credentials, or access to sophisticated financial instruments.

The specific investment principles that Scheiber employed—buying quality companies, holding for the long term, reinvesting dividends, minimizing taxes and transaction costs—have become foundational tenets of modern dividend growth investing. While these principles were practiced by other investors both before and after Scheiber, her story provides one of the most compelling real-world demonstrations of their effectiveness when applied with unwavering consistency over an extended time horizon.

At Yeshiva University, Scheiber's philanthropic legacy continues to grow. The scholarship fund she established has supported numerous women in their pursuit of medical education, removing financial barriers that might otherwise have prevented them from entering the medical profession. The fund represents one of the largest individual gifts in the university's history and has had a transformative impact on the institution's ability to support female medical students.

Scheiber's story also serves as a commentary on the hidden lives of ordinary Americans and the assumptions that are often made about wealth and appearance. Her neighbors, who saw an elderly woman living in a modest apartment and wearing old clothes, had no conception of the fortune she had quietly accumulated. The revelation of her wealth after her death challenged conventional notions about who can be an investor and what an investor looks like.

Perhaps most significantly, Scheiber's decision to direct her entire fortune toward the education of women transformed a life marked by discrimination and professional frustration into a lasting force for opportunity and equality. In doing so, she ensured that the institutional barriers she had faced would be, at least in part, dismantled for future generations.