Squirreled away

How not to save millions of dollars. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

Today’s newsletter runs about 800 words, and it ends with a small fortune. But, it's not a "get rich quick" story.

Its protagonist wound up quite wealthy, but I hope you won't be inspired to imitate her—even though a lot of misguided people called her an inspiration.

Her name was Sylvia Bloom, and she worked for 67 years as a secretary at a Wall Street law firm, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, where she’d been one of the first employees.

She rode the subway each morning and went home each night to the modest Brooklyn apartment she shared with her husband.

During that time, it was later revealed, Bloom accumulated a total of $9 million. She spent almost none of it, and she lived such a quiet, parsimonious life (she died at age 96, in 2016), hiding it all away, that nobody had any idea of her wealth.

Nobody, apparently, including her husband, with whom she shared that modest apartment all those years (rent-controlled, by the way, which is kind of a big deal in New York). He died in 2002; …