Ronald Reid was the last person you would expect to be a millionaire. He used safety pins to hold his old coats together and cut his own firewood well into his 90s. He drove a second-hand Toyota Yaris and resisted new purchases. His only real indulgence may have been his daily English muffin and a cup of coffee at the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital in Vermont, where a friend remembered him sitting at the exact same stool every morning. In his career as a janitor and gas station attendant, he was known as a hard worker. But friends and family never suspected he was building an $8 million fortune. Decades of Compounding Put to Work: When he died in June 2014, Reid’s will revealed an $8 million portfolio. It turned out that Reid, in addition to saving diligently for decades, had also been buying quality, dividend-paying companies that he held for the long term. Reid owned shares of at least 95 companies at the time of his death — names you’d recognize like Procter & Gamble, JPMorga...