26. Rockefeller lived frugally despite his enormous wealth
Rockefeller’s ingrained frugality was legendary. Despite an army of accountants, bookkeepers, and business managers he continued to insist on going over his company’s books himself, and he kept a pocket ledger in which he scrupulously recorded his personal expenditures daily. In order to keep his children, and eventually grandchildren, unaware of the vast wealth at the family’s disposal they were prevented from visiting his offices while young, though eventually through employment with Standard Oil the size of their fortune was revealed to them. He taught them the sin of waste and extravagance, and though he built luxurious homes, he did not go to the extremes of many of the rich of the day, who constructed massive estates in Newport, Rhode Island, Massachusetts’ Berkshire Hills, and in the Hudson Valley of New York.
