Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is a Silicon Valley legend. Though he's no longer involved with the company he helped build, Wozniak remains a figure in the tech world, speaking at conferences and offering insights on the state of the industry. He even did a stint on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" back in 2009. But his attitude toward money is surprisingly different from that of most of his peers. In a recent interview with Fortune, the tech icon shares his straightforward investing strategy, which is to avoid it and to keep his distance from finance altogether. "I do not invest. I don't do that stuff," Wozniak tells Fortune. "I didn't want to be near money, because it could corrupt your values."

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Wozniak says he doesn't like the growing Silicon Valley trend of "engineers as rock stars," a construct that didn't exist at the time he was helping build Apple: "Mostly it's because of how much money they have — and I went the other way. I did not want to be one of them." Wozniak aimed to build innovative products and improve the world with Apple, not to get rich. "I really didn't want to be in that super 'more than you could ever need' category," he says. Rather, Wozniak chose to invest in things close to his heart, such as museums in San Jose, Calif., his hometown. "I was born there, and I have a street named after me there because of it," he says.

Steve Jobs on stage in front of an old photo of Jobs and Steve Wozniak Tony Avelar | Bloomberg | Getty Images