An American Story

MY MONEY JOURNEY began as a young girl when a confluence of events created tragedy and financial ruin for my family. I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s. After the death of my father at age 40, we lost our home and had only the barest of necessities.

At that time, there was little help for people in our situation. The meager government benefits that existed were highly regulated and came with a lot of intrusion into your personal life. Today, people in need receive many financial and medical benefits. Not so then.

Mom was handicapped by severe hearing loss. In those days, hearing aids were bulky and cumbersome. Her first one was a device she had to keep in a pocket with wires leading up to her ears. It was reconditioned and never worked properly. The next one was a little better. It was built into the bars of her eyeglasses, but was heavy and clumsy.

Even at that time, hearing aids weren’t cheap. The eyeglass hearing aid, which I bought for her, cost $550—a small fortune at the time. I had to take out a loan from Manufacturers Trust Company, a forerunner of JPMorgan Chase, to pay for it. For the rest of my mother’s life, I became the buffer between her and the world. At the time of Dad’s death, my younger brother was two months old, Mom was 44 and I was 13. Despite a life that was a “tough row to hoe,” my wild Irish mother lived to be 98.

As I grew older, I always had some sort of job. Fortunately, I was quick at learning and able to make a little money by tutoring other children. Soon, I was also old enough to babysit. I got my working papers and subsequently had a series of jobs after school and on Saturdays. My first job was at S.S. Kresge, a five- and 10-cent store in downtown Brooklyn. I knew that other girls my age were having dance and music lessons, and had more time for studying. But I wasn’t resentful. I liked working.

In the 1950s and ’60s, there were limited career choices for young women. I found secretarial work more enticing than nursing or teaching. After I graduated high school, I pursued stenographic studies at night. The high school I had attended offered free evening courses, including an advanced course in Pitman shorthand. I practiced typing on an old typewriter I bought.

I got a job as a secretary with General Motors’ Chevrolet division. The salary was good and the benefits were excellent. For the first time in my life, I had health insurance. Working in Manhattan was exciting. I also worked at Bloomingdale’s at nights and on Saturdays during the holiday season. I was aware that many of my colleagues were graduates of the Katharine Gibbs secretarial school, a highly acclaimed school for polished secretaries, so I honed my skills by taking night courses there.

When my mother, my younger brother and I moved to Delaware County, outside of Philadelphia, I got a transfer to the Chevrolet division in King of Prussia, where I met a handsome ex-Marine who swept me off my feet. We’ve been married 57 years.

I reached the highest executive secretary level at my next job, as secretary to the regional manager at AC Spark Plug in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. I’d had to change jobs because GM’s policies didn’t allow both my husband and I to work in the same Chevrolet office.

We decided to buy a house in New Jersey. I got a job with the Cadillac car division in Cherry Hill, N.J. That was to be my last position with GM. The office moved to the Valley Forge, Pa., area and it proved to be too much of a daily trip for me. During my tenure at Cadillac, we were able to buy an executive’s company car with low mileage at a very good price. Imagine that—a poor girl from Brooklyn riding around in a Cadillac.

The days of the polished secretary have long since faded. But it was so much fun while it lasted. I’ll never forget the beautiful Christmas luncheons we were treated to while working for Chevrolet in New York. They were always at the best hotels—the Waldorf-Astoria and the Garden Room at the Barbizon Plaza, as well as others.

My background taught me how to stretch a dollar. I became an adept do-it-yourselfer, learning how to cut and style my own hair. Not far from where I worked in New York City was a Chock full o’ Nuts lunch counter where you could get a quality cup of coffee for 15 cents, and a tasty sandwich and soup for about 50 cents. Sometimes, I skipped the soup in favor of a slice of one of the store’s delicious cream pies or wonderful whole wheat donuts.

Being frugal allowed me to save. I enrolled in GM’s stock purchase plan. The company matched your contributions. Previously, I thought that stocks were only for rich people, but soon realized that was how many got rich. At this point, I began to think about investing part of my small nest egg in the stock market. I had no one to guide me, so I plowed headlong into penny stocks. That proved to be a fruitless endeavor. I also tried two different stockbrokers. I wasn’t impressed with their results or their ideas.

Around 1965, I began studying the stock market. The library was my haven. I learned about stocks, bonds and mutual funds. My investing became more focused when I read a book by the late Geraldine Weiss entitled Dividends Don’t Lie. It gave me a point of reference, allowing me to gauge whether a stock was undervalued or overvalued. From there, I was on my way.

I first purchased shares in Public Service Electric & Gas, Brooklyn Union Gas and Consolidated Edison. Utilities, I figured, were commodities that people needed. I also liked pharmaceutical stocks. Bristol Myers Squibb is still a favorite, along with Merck. The consumer stocks appealed to me as well. Procter & Gamble has been one of my top performers, as well as Johnson & Johnson.

When I left GM after 26 years, I could have stopped working. We could have gotten by on my husband’s salary. But I was offered a three-day-a-week bookkeeping plus secretarial job which allowed me to devote more time to Mom’s care and also help my husband with his parents. I finally retired from the working world in 1996 at age 60, so I’ve now been retired for 26 years.

In 2018, I was diagnosed with stage four metastatic lung cancer, incurable but treatable, and spent the next three years in chemotherapy and immunotherapy. I never thought I’d still be here—but I am, thanks in part to my husband’s constant support and care. I’ve now been in remission for more than a year, and I’m still very interested in finance and investing. I’m something of a neighborhood investment guru. When asked for a stock tip, I always answer, “Here’s the best one I have: Don’t take any hot tips.”

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