MIDYEAR REVIEW OF INVESTMENTS AND PERSONAL FINANCE : Money Moves of the Rich and Famous

Celebrities have to manage their money too--and some of them are pretty good at it. So eat your heart out, Robin Leach. In their own words, six notables shared their savvy moves with free-lance writer Susan Jaques.

Al Greenwood, “The Bedspread King of Long Beach”

Twenty years ago, in an old converted airplane hangar out in Bakersfield, there was a sloppily managed outfit making mattress pads. The production manager also repaired the machines. They couldn’t sell their merchandise because the pads weren’t properly bagged.

My wife thought I was crazy, but I took everything I had--$3,000--and bought two big truck-trailer loads of mattress pads for 35 cents apiece. In those days, $3,000 was big money, like $100,000 now, and I was betting that my check wouldn’t clear for a few days. I rented two warehouses to put the mattress pads in and started selling them in our window for $3 apiece. We made out like bandits! Women bought 20 mattress pads at a time.

That decision really got the ball rolling for me and taught me a lot. You have to operate within the parameters of what you have; you can’t aspire to buy a big corporation with $2 in your pocket. But if you see an opportunity, you need to trust your gut feelings and run with it. In business, a person should set goals a little beyond their reach. I didn’t have enough money to buy the whole mattress factory, so I bought what I could.