Do you want to hear about a neat investing trick a family friend showed me? She started with $250. Through alchemical magic – well, a mixture of time, compound interest, and an important dash of negligence – she turned that $250 into an investment today worth $135,000. She still owns it, so results may vary in the future, but her gains are amazing.

I imagine you’d like to learn her trick. How ever did she do it? What financial wizardry did she employ? It was probably Bitcoin, right? Or some lesser known cryptocurrency? Or a hot commodity tip?

My friend requested I not identify her. I’m going to call her Ruth, although that’s not her real name. That’s her mom’s name.

The story starts in 1965. Ruth was newly married. As much as possible, I’ll let her tell it:

“I lived in the State of Washington, and my grandmother used to buy stocks, even though she was a middle-class person. She thought it was good to buy local, and Seattle was dominated by Boeing Co (BA).”

“At that time people thought you were supposed to buy 100 shares of everything. I didn’t have enough to buy that amount, so I bought less than that initially.

I invested around $250 at the time…It was probably 20 shares, no more than 40. I remember the broker criticized me for not buying 100 shares.”

Ok, that’s the beginning of Ruth story. Are you ready for the magical part? Then Ruth did nothing for 53 years. That’s it. That’s the whole magic.

Never sell.

In 2018, her initial $250 investment in “20 or 40” shares of her local company Boeing has turned into 400 shares through stock splits and the reinvestment of dividends. Her initial investment is worth, at the time of this writing, $134,800, through Ruth’s benign neglect. The dividends alone on her shares pay around $2,700 per year, or more than 10 times her original investment.

At least three important lessons and clarifications of the lessons of Ruth’s story are necessary.