Far Out Friday: Retired teacher makes over $2M playing the stock market

Talk about having skeletons in the closet! This pensioner didn't tell a soul - not even her family - about her hidden fortune before she passed away.

A Scottish pensioner secretly saved up £1.1 million - or about CDN$2.03 million - playing the stock market, leaving it all to charity when she passed away, the U.K. Telegraph reported Tuesday. 

 

Retiree Margaret Dickson - who earned a modest living, when employed, as a primary school teacher, and a police officer - died last year at 72 years old, leaving behind what her family believed were her only assets - a small apartment she owned in Glasgow. 

 

Little did they know, she held a million-pound investment portfolio, all of which she gave to charity, as per her will. 

 

According to the Telegraph, Dickson’s funds were stored across stocks, shares and bank accounts, including  £63,000 in Marks and Spencer, £62,000 in British American Tobacco and £230,000 invested in the Government-backed saving scheme, National Savings and Investments.

 

 "Nobody had any idea how much the will was worth or just how much her wealth had accumulated," said her cousin, Jean Brook, who told news agencies that an uncle - a stockbroker - invested Dickson’s money on her behalf from the time she was a child. 

 

"We were astonished to see how much money she had," Brook said.

 

According to her family, the only hint Dickson - who never married - gave of her hidden fortune were her habitual foreign holidays and occasional prize cheques received from premium bonds. 


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