# Warren Buffett

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Warren Edward Buffett ( BUFF-it; born August 30, 1930) is an American investor and philanthropist who is the chairman emeritus and former CEO of the conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway. As a result of his success, Buffett is one of the best-known investors in the world. According to Forbes, as of January 2026, Buffett's estimated net worth stood at US$148.9 billion, making him the ninth-rich

## Key facts

## Overview

Warren Edward Buffett ( BUFF-it; born August 30, 1930) is an American investor and philanthropist who is the chairman emeritus and former CEO of the conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway. As a result of his success, Buffett is one of the best-known investors in the world. According to Forbes, as of January 2026, Buffett's estimated net worth stood at US$148.9 billion, making him the ninth-richest person in the world. Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska. The son of U.S. congressman and businessman Howard Buffett, he developed an interest in business and investing during his youth. He entered the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1947 before graduating from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln at 20. He went on to graduate from Columbia Business School, where he molded his investment approach around the concept of value investing pioneered by Benjamin Graham. He attended New York Institute of Finance to focus on his economics background and soon pursued a business career. He then began several business ventures and investment partnerships, including one with Graham. He created Buffett Partnership Ltd. in 1956 and his investment firm eventually acquired textile manufacturer Berkshire Hathaway, applying its name to a diversified holding company. Buffett emerged as the company's chairman and majority shareholder in 1970. In 1978, fellow investor and long-time business associate Charlie Munger joined Buffett as vice-chairman. From 1970 to 2026, Buffett presided as the chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway, one of America's foremost holding companies and world's leading corporate conglomerates. He has been referred to as the "Oracle" or "Sage" of Omaha by global media as a result of having accumulated a massive fortune derived from his business and investment success. Buffett adheres to the principles of value investing and frugality despite his wealth. Buffett met Chuck Feeney and has pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes; until 2026 his giving was primarily to the Gates Foundation. He founded The Giving Pledge in 2010, with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, whereby billionaires pledge to give away at least half of their fortunes.

## Early life and education

Buffett was born on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska, as the second of three children and the only son of Congressman Howard Buffett and his wife, Leila (née Stahl) Buffett. He began his education at Rose Hill Elementary School. In 1942, his father was elected to the first of four terms in the United States Congress, and after moving with his family to Washington, D.C., Warren finished elementary school, attended Alice Deal Junior High School and graduated from what was then Woodrow Wilson High School in 1947, where his senior yearbook picture reads: "likes math; a future stockbroker". After finishing high school and finding success with his side entrepreneurial and investment ventures, Buffett wanted to skip college to go directly into business but was overruled by his father. Buffett showcased an interest in business and investing at a young age. He was inspired by a book he borrowed from the Omaha public library at age seven, One Thousand Ways to Make $1000. Much of Buffett's early childhood years were enlivened with entrepreneurial ventures. In one of his first business ventures, Buffett sold chewing gum, Coca-Cola, and weekly magazines door to door. He worked in his grandfather's grocery store. During his high school years, he also made money delivering newspapers, selling golf balls and stamps, and detailing cars, among other means.  On his first income tax return in 1944, Buffett took a $35 deduction (equivalent to $640 in 2025) for the use of his bicycle and watch on his paper route. In 1945, as a high school sophomore, Buffett and a friend spent $25 (equivalent to $447 in 2025) to purchase a used pinball machine, which they placed in the local barber shop. Within months, they owned several machines in three different barber shops across Omaha. In 1947 they sold the business to a war veteran for $1,200 (equivalent to $17,303 in 2025).

Buffett's interest in the stock market and investing dates back to his schoolboy days spent in the customers' lounge of a regional stock brokerage near his father's own brokerage office. His father took interest in cultivating and educating the young Warren's curiosity surrounding the subject of business and investing, even at one point taking him to visit the New York Stock Exchange when he was 10. At 11, he bought three shares of Cities Service Preferred for himself, and three for his sister Doris Buffett (who also became a philanthropist).  At 15, Warren made more than $175 monthly (equivalent to $3,130 in 2025) delivering Washington Post newspapers. In high school, he invested in a business owned by his father and bought a 40-acre farm worked by a tenant farmer. He bought the land when he was 14 years old with $1,200 (equivalent to $21,947 in 2025) of his savings. By the time he graduated from college, Buffett had amassed $9,800 in savings (equivalent to $132,608 in 2025). In 1947, Buffett matriculated at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He would have preferred to focus on his business ventures, but enrolled due to pressure from his father. Warren studied there for two years and joined the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity. He then transferred to the University of Nebraska where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in business administration with major in Investment management in 1951. After being rejected by Harvard Business School in the spring of 1950, Buffett enrolled at Columbia Business School of Columbia University upon learning that Benjamin Graham taught there. He earned a Master of Science in Economics from Columbia in 1951. After graduating, Buffett attended the New York Institute of Finance.

The basic ideas of investing are to look at stocks as business, use the market's fluctuations to your advantage, and seek a margin of safety. That's what Ben Graham taught us. A hundred years from now they will still be the cornerstones of investing.

## Early business career

Buffett worked from 1951 to 1954 at his father's firm, Buffett-Falk & Co., as an investment salesman; from 1954 to 1956 at Graham-Newman Corp. as a securities analyst; from 1956 to 1969 at several investment partnerships as the general partner; and from 1970 as chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. In 1951, Buffett discovered that Graham was on the board of GEICO insurance. Taking a train to Washington, D.C., on a Saturday, he knocked on the door of GEICO's headquarters until a janitor admitted him. There he met Lorimer Davidson, GEICO's vice president, and the two discussed the insurance business for hours, and Buffett made his first purchase of GEICO stock. Davidson would eventually become Buffett's lifelong friend and a lasting influence, and would later recall that he found Buffett to be an "extraordinary man" after only fifteen minutes. Buffett wanted to work on Wall Street but both his father and Ben Graham urged him not to. He offered to work for Graham for free, but Graham refused. Buffett returned to Omaha and worked as a stockbroker while taking a Dale Carnegie public speaking course. Using what he learned, he felt confident enough to teach an "Investment Principles" night class at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. The average age of his students was more than twice his own. During this time he also purchased a Sinclair gas station as a side investment but it was unsuccessful. In 1954, Buffett accepted a job at Benjamin Graham's partnership. His starting salary was $12,000 a year (equivalent to $143,866 in 2025). There he worked closely with Walter Schloss. Graham was adamant that stock picks should provide a wide margin of safety after weighing the trade-off between their price and their intrinsic value. In 1956, Benjamin Graham retired and closed his partnership. At this time Buffett, who had amassed personal savings over $174,000 (equivalent to $2,060,526 in 2025), decided to return to Omaha, where he would quickly start a series of investment partnerships. In 1957, Buffett operated three investment partnerships. By 1959, the total had grown to six partnerships. That summer, Buffett was introduced to his future partner Charlie Munger during a business luncheon at The Omaha Club. In 1961, Buffett revealed that 35% of the partnership's assets were invested in the Sanborn Map Company. He explained that Sanborn stock sold for only $45 per share in 1958 (equivalent to $502 in 2025), but the company's investment portfolio was worth $65 per share (equivalent to $725 in 2025). This meant that Sanborn's map business was being valued at "minus $20". Buffett eventually purchased 23% of the company's outstanding shares as an activist investor, obtaining a seat for himself on the board of directors, and allied with other dissatisfied shareholders to control 44% of the shares. To avoid a proxy fight, the board offered to repurchase shares at fair value, paying with a portion of its investment portfolio. 77% of the outstanding shares were turned in. Buffett reaped a 50 percent return on investment in just two years.

## Assuming Berkshire

In 1962, Buffett became a millionaire with the success of his partnerships, which by then had grown to 11 entities and held nearly $7.2 million (equivalent to $76,633,663 in 2025), of which more than $1,025,000 (equivalent to $10,910,000 in 2025) belonged to Buffett. At the start of the year, he merged the various partnerships into the single entity Buffett Partnership, Ltd., which would be his primary investment vehicle for the remainder of the decade. Buffett invested in and eventually took control of a textile manufacturing company, Berkshire Hathaway. He began buying shares in Berkshire from Seabury Stanton, the owner, who quit due to policy disagreements with the new majority shareholder. Buffett's partnerships began purchasing shares at $7.60 per share (equivalent to $81 in 2025). In 1965, when Buffett's partnerships began purchasing Berkshire aggressively, they paid $14.86 per share (equivalent to $152 in 2025) while the company had working capital of $19 per share (equivalent to $194 in 2025). This did not include the value of fixed assets (factory and equipment). Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway at a board meeting and named a new president, Ken Chace, to run the company. In 1966, Buffett closed the partnership to new money. He later claimed that the textile business had been his worst trade. He then moved the business into the insurance sector, and, in 1985, the last of the mills that had been the core business of Berkshire Hathaway was sold. In a second letter, Buffett announced his first investment in a private business – Hochschild, Kohn and Co, a privately owned Baltimore department store. In 1967, Berkshire paid out its first and only dividend of 10 cents. In 1969, Buffett liquidated the partnership and transferred their assets to his partners including shares of Berkshire Hathaway. In 1970, Buffet became the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway's board of directors and wrote the first of his annual letter to shareholders. He lived solely on his salary of $50,000 per year (equivalent to $438,975 in 2025) and his outside investment income. In 1973, Berkshire began to acquire stock in the Washington Post Company. Buffett became close friends with Katharine Graham, who controlled the company and its flagship newspaper and joined its board. In 1974, the SEC opened a formal investigation into Buffett and Berkshire's acquisition of Wesco Financial, due to possible conflict of interest. No charges were brought. In 1977, Berkshire indirectly purchased the Buffalo Evening News for $32.5 million (equivalent to $172,672,982 in 2025). Antitrust charges started, instigated by its rival, the Buffalo Courier-Express. Both papers lost money until the Courier-Express folded in 1982. In 1979, Berkshire began to acquire stock in ABC. Capital Cities announced a $3.5 billion (equivalent to $1.5526134801×1010 in 2025) purchase of ABC on March 18, 1985, surprising the media industry, as ABC was four times bigger than Capital Cities at the time. Buffett helped finance the deal in return for a 25% stake in the combined company. The newly merged company, known as Capital Cities/ABC (or CapCities/ABC), was forced to sell some stations due to Federal Communications Commission ownership rules. The two companies also owned several radio stations in the same markets. Buffet's net worth passed one billion dollars in 1985. In 1987, Berkshire Hathaway purchased a 12% stake in Salomon Inc., making it the largest shareholder and Buffett a director. In 1990, a scandal involving John Gutfreund (former CEO of Salomon Brothers) surfaced. A rogue trader, Paul Mozer, was submitting bids in excess of what was allowed by Treasury rules. When this was brought to Gutfreund's attention, he did not immediately suspend the rogue trader. Gutfreund left the company in August 1991. Buffett became chairman of Salomon until the crisis passed. In 1988, Buffett began buying The Coca-Cola Company stock, eventually purchasing up to 7% of the company for $1.02 billion (equivalent to $2.776730445×109 in 2025). It would turn out to be one of Berkshire's most lucrative investments and one which it still holds.

## As a billionaire

In 1998, Buffett acquired General Re (Gen Re) as a subsidiary in a deal that presented difficulties – according to the Rational Walk investment website, "underwriting standards proved to be inadequate", while a "problematic derivatives book" was resolved after numerous years and a significant loss. Gen Re later provided reinsurance after Buffett became involved with Maurice R. Greenberg at AIG in 2002.

During a 2005 investigation of an accounting fraud case involving AIG, Gen Re executives became implicated. On March 15, 2005, the AIG board forced Greenberg to resign from his post as chairman and CEO after New York state regulators claimed that AIG had engaged in questionable transactions and improper accounting. On February 9, 2006, AIG agreed to pay a $1.6 billion fine (equivalent to $2.555298778×109 in 2025).  In 2010, the U.S. government agreed to a $92 million (equivalent to $135,830,917 in 2025) settlement with Gen Re, allowing the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary to avoid prosecution in the AIG case. Gen Re also made a commitment to implement "corporate governance concessions", which required Berkshire Hathaway's chief financial officer to attend General Re's audit committee meetings and mandated the appointment of an independent director. In 2002, Buffett entered in $11 billion (equivalent to $1.9690101758×1010 in 2025) worth of forward contracts to deliver U.S. dollars against other currencies. By April 2006, his total gain on these contracts was over $2 billion (equivalent to $1.7567679102×1010 in 2025). Buffett announced in June 2006 that he would gradually give away 85% of his Berkshire holdings to five foundations in annual gifts of stock, starting in July 2006—the largest contribution going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2007, in a letter to shareholders, Buffett announced that he was looking for a younger successor, or perhaps successors, to run his investment business.

## 2007–08 financial crisis

Buffett ran into criticism during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 and 2008, part of the Great Recession starting in 2007, that he had allocated capital too early resulting in suboptimal deals. "Buy American. I am." he wrote for an opinion piece published in the New York Times in 2008. Buffett called the downturn in the financial sector that started in 2007 "poetic justice". Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway suffered a 77% drop in earnings during Q3 2008 and several of his later deals suffered large mark-to-market losses. On September 23, 2008, Berkshire Hathaway acquired 10 percent of perpetual preferred stock of Goldman Sachs. Some of Buffett's put options (European exercise at expiry only) that he wrote (sold) were running at around $6.73 (equivalent to $1.0063794436×1010 in 2025) billion mark-to-market losses as of late 2008. The scale of the potential loss prompted the SEC to demand that Berkshire produce, "a more robust disclosure" of factors used to value the contracts. Buffett also helped Dow Chemical pay for its $18.8 billion (equivalent to $2.8112828439×1010 in 2025) takeover of Rohm & Haas. He thus became the single largest shareholder in the enlarged group with his Berkshire Hathaway, which provided $3 billion (equivalent to $4.486089645×109 in 2025), underlining his instrumental role during the crisis in debt and equity markets. In 2008, Buffett became the richest person in the world, garnering a total net worth estimated at $62 billion (equivalent to $9.2712519320×1010 in 2025) by Forbes and at $58 billion (equivalent to $8.6731066461×1010 in 2025) by Yahoo, dethroning Bill Gates, who had been number one on the Forbes list for 13 consecutive years. In 2009, Gates regained the top position on the Forbes list, with Buffett shifted to second place. Both of the men's values dropped, to $40 billion (equivalent to $6.0027919963×1010 in 2025) and $37 billion (equivalent to $5.5525825966×1010 in 2025) respectively—according to Forbes, Buffett lost $25 billion (equivalent to $3.7517449977×1010 in 2025) over a 12-month period during 2008/2009. In October 2008, the media reported that Buffett had agreed to buy General Electric (GE) preferred stock. The operation included special incentives: he received an option to buy three billion shares of GE stock, at $22.25 (equivalent to $33 in 2025), over the five years following the agreement, and Buffett also received a 10% dividend (callable within three years). In February 2009, Buffett sold some Procter & Gamble Co. and Johnson & Johnson shares from his personal portfolio. In addition to suggestions of mistiming, the wisdom in keeping some of Berkshire's major holdings, including The Coca-Cola Company, which in 1998 peaked at $86 (equivalent to $170 in 2025), raised questions. Buffett discussed the difficulties of knowing when to sell in the company's 2004 annual report:

That may seem easy to do when one looks through an always-clean, rear-view mirror. Unfortunately, however, it's the windshield through which investors must peer, and that glass is invariably fogged. In March 2009, Buffett said in a cable television interview that the economy had "fallen off a cliff ... Not only has the economy slowed down a lot, but people have really changed their habits like I haven't seen". Additionally, Buffett feared that inflation levels that occurred in the 1970s—which led to years of painful stagflation—might re-emerge.

## A capitalized Berkshire

In 2009, Buffett invested $2.6 billion (equivalent to $3.901814798×109 in 2025) as a part of Swiss Re's campaign to raise equity capital. Berkshire Hathaway already owned a 3% stake, with rights to own more than 20%. Also in 2009, Buffett acquired Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. for $34 billion (equivalent to $5.1023731968×1010 in 2025) in cash and stock. Alice Schroeder, author of Snowball, said that a key reason for the purchase was to diversify Berkshire Hathaway from the financial industry. Measured by market capitalization in the Financial Times Global 500, Berkshire Hathaway was the eighteenth largest corporation in the world as of June 2009. In 2009, Buffett divested his failed investment in ConocoPhillips. The merger with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) closed upon BNSF shareholder approval during Q1 of 2010. This deal was valued at approximately $44 billion, with $10 billion of outstanding BNSF debt (equivalent to $7.9726842667×1010 in 2025) and represented an increase of the previously existing stake of 22%.  In June 2010, Buffett defended the credit-rating agencies for their role in the U.S. financial crisis, claiming:

Very, very, very few people could appreciate the bubble. That's the nature of bubbles — they become mass delusions. On March 18, 2011, Goldman Sachs was given Federal Reserve approval to buy back Berkshire's preferred stock in Goldman. Buffett had been reluctant to give up the stock, which averaged $1.4 million (equivalent to $2,003,698 in 2025) in dividends per day, saying:

I'm going to be the Osama bin Laden of capitalism. I'm on my way to an unknown destination in Asia where I'm going to look for a cave. If the U.S. Armed forces can't find Osama bin Laden in 10 years, let Goldman Sachs try to find me. In November 2011, it was announced that over the course of the previous eight months, Buffett had bought 64 million shares of International Business Machine Corp (IBM) stock, worth around $11 billion (equivalent to $1.5743343195×1010 in 2025). This unanticipated investment raised his stake in the company to around 5.5 percent—the largest stake in IBM alongside that of State Street Global Advisors. Buffett had said on numerous prior occasions that he would not invest in technology because he did not fully understand it, so the move came as a surprise to many investors and observers. During the interview, in which he revealed the investment to the public, Buffett stated that he was impressed by the company's ability to retain corporate clients and said, "I don't know of any large company that really has been as specific on what they intend to do and how they intend to do it as IBM". In May 2012, Buffett's acquisition of Media General, consisting of 63 newspapers in the south-eastern U.S., was announced. The company was the second news print purchase made by Buffett in one year. Interim publisher James W. Hopson announced on July 18, 2013, that the Press of Atlantic City would be sold to Buffett's BH Media Group by ABARTA, a private holding company based in Pittsburgh, U.S. At the Berkshire shareholders meeting in May 2013, Buffett explained that he did not expect to "move the needle" at Berkshire with newspaper acquisitions, but he anticipates an annual return of 10 percent. The Press of Atlantic City became Berkshire's 30th daily newspaper, following other purchases such as Virginia, U.S.' Roanoke Times and The Tulsa World in Oklahoma, U.S. After the difficulties of the economic crisis, Buffett managed to bring its company back to its pre-recession standards: in Q2 2014, Berkshire Hathaway made $6.4 billion (equivalent to $8.703964015×109 in 2025) in net profit, the most it had ever made in a three-month period. On August 14, 2014, the price of Berkshire Hathaway's shares hit $200,000 a share (equivalent to $271,999 in 2025) for the first time, capitalizing the company at $328 billion (equivalent to $4.46078155749×1011 in 2025). While Buffett had given away much of his stock to charities by this time, he still held 321,000 shares worth $64.2 billion (equivalent to $8.7311639022×1010 in 2025). On August 20, 2014, Berkshire Hathaway was fined $896,000 (equivalent to $1,218,555 in 2025) for failing to report as required the December 9, 2013, purchase of shares in USG Corporation. A 2023 ProPublica article based on a leak of confidential IRS data alleged that Buffett had made equity trades in his personal portfolio involving companies that Berkshire Hathaway bought or sold during the same quarter or the quarter before, raising concerns about conflicts of interest. On three dates between 2009 and 2012, Buffett sold shares of Johnson and Johnson, Walmart, and Wells Fargo, with the sales totaling $80 million in value (equivalent to $120,055,840 in 2025). Although Buffett has not commented, Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman Charlie Munger dismissed the allegations, saying "I don't think there's the slightest chance that Warren Buffett is doing something that is deeply evil to make money for himself." At Berkshire Hathaway's investor conference on May 3, 2025, Buffett requested that the board appoint Greg Abel to succeed him as CEO of the company by the end of the year. On May 5, 2025, the company announced the appointment of Abel as president and CEO, effective January 1, 2026, with Buffett remaining chairman. Buffett stepped down as chairman on September 18, 2026, effective immediately, with his son Howard Graham Buffett succeeding him. He remains a director of the company.

## Investment philosophy

Buffett's writings include his annual reports and various articles. Buffett is recognized by communicators as a great story-teller, as evidenced by his annual letters to shareholders. He has warned about the pernicious effects of inflation:

The arithmetic makes it plain that inflation is a far more devastating tax than anything that has been enacted by our legislatures. The inflation tax has a fantastic ability to simply consume capital. It makes no difference to a widow with her savings in a 5 percent passbook account whether she pays 100 percent income tax on her interest income during a period of zero inflation, or pays no income taxes during years of 5 percent inflation. In his article, "The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville", Buffett rebutted the academic efficient-market hypothesis, that beating the S&P 500 was "pure chance", by highlighting the results achieved by a number of students of the Graham and Dodd value investing school of thought. In addition to himself, Buffett named Walter J. Schloss, Tom Knapp, Ed Anderson (Tweedy, Browne LLC), William J. Ruane (Sequoia Fund), Charlie Munger (Buffett's partner at Berkshire), Rick Guerin (Pacific Partners Ltd.), and Stan Perlmeter (Perlmeter Investments). In his November 1999 Fortune article, he warned of investors' unrealistic expectations:

Let me summarize what I've been saying about the stock market: I think it's very hard to come up with a persuasive case that equities will over the next 17 years perform anything like—anything like—they've performed in the past 17. If I had to pick the most probable return, from appreciation and dividends combined, that investors in aggregate—repeat, aggregate—would earn in a world of constant interest rates, 2% inflation, and those ever hurtful frictional costs, it would be 6%!

## Index funds versus active management

Buffett has been a supporter of index funds for people who are either not interested in managing their own money or do not have the time. Buffett is skeptical that active management can outperform the market in the long run, and has advised both individual and institutional investors to move their money to low-cost index funds that track broad, diversified stock market indices. Buffett said in one of his letters to shareholders that "when trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients". In 2007, Buffett made a bet with numerous managers that a simple S&P 500 index fund will outperform hedge funds that charge exorbitant fees. By 2017, the index fund was outperforming every hedge fund that made the bet against Buffett.

## Using investment banks

Buffett has a long-standing aversion to using the services of investment banks via Berkshire Hathaway. This dynamic was also reported in Barron's, Insider, and Seeking Alpha, among others.

## Investment style

In his early years, Warren Buffett was influenced by Benjamin Graham who was a value investor and is known as "the father of value investing". When studying under Graham in Columbia Business School, Buffett adopted that style which was to find undervalued stocks below their intrinsic value known as "cigar butts". He believed in buying "durable competitive stocks" rather than just "cheap stocks" which he assessed by brand loyalty, strong consistent earnings, competitive advantage and pricing power in addition to holding it for long term. He came up with rules such as 1. "Never lose money", 2. "Never forget rule number 1", believing in the importance of protecting capital. He believed the ideal holding period for a stock was forever and he even said in a 1996 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders "If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes".

## Personal life

In 1949, Buffett developed a crush on a young woman whose boyfriend had a ukulele. In an attempt to compete, he bought one of the instruments and has been playing it ever since. Though the attempt to capture her attention was unsuccessful, his music interest became a key part of his becoming a part of Susan Thompson's life, and led to their marriage. Buffett often plays the instrument at stockholder meetings and other opportunities. His love of the instrument led to the commissioning of two custom Dairy Queen ukuleles by Dave Talsma, one of which was auctioned for charity. In 1952, Buffett married Susan at Dundee Presbyterian Church. The following year, they had their first child, Susan Alice. She was followed by Howard (b. 1954) and Peter (b. 1958). The couple began living separately in 1977, although they remained married until Susan's death in July 2004. Their daughter Susan lives in Omaha, is a national board member of Girls, Inc., and performs charitable work through the Susan A. Buffett Foundation. In 2006, on his 76th birthday, Buffett married his longtime companion, Astrid Menks, who was then 60 years old—she had lived with him since his wife's departure to San Francisco in 1977. Susan had arranged for the two to meet before she left Omaha to pursue her singing career. All three were close and Christmas cards to friends were signed "Warren, Susie and Astrid". Susan briefly discussed this relationship in an interview on the Charlie Rose Show shortly before her death, in a rare glimpse into Buffett's personal life. Buffett disowned his son Peter's adopted daughter, Nicole, in 2006 after she participated in the Jamie Johnson documentary The One Percent about the growing economic inequality between the wealthy and the average citizen in the United States. Although his first wife referred to Nicole as one of her "adored grandchildren", Buffett wrote Nicole a letter stating, "I have not emotionally or legally adopted you as a grandchild, nor have the rest of my family adopted you as a niece or a cousin". By 2022, she and Buffett had reconciled.

His 2006 annual salary was about $100,000 (equivalent to $159,706 in 2025), which is small compared to senior executive remuneration in comparable companies. In 2008, he earned a total compensation of $175,000 (equivalent to $261,689 in 2025), which included a base salary of just $100,000 (equivalent to $149,536 in 2025). In 1958, Buffett purchased a five-bedroom stucco house in Omaha, where he still lives, for US$31,500 (equivalent to $351,514 in 2025). He also owned a vacation home in Laguna Beach, California, which he purchased for $150,000 in 1971 (equivalent to $1,192,482 in 2025). He sold it for $7.5 million (equivalent to $9,616,022 in 2025) in 2018.  In 1989, after spending nearly $6.7 million (equivalent to $17,402,013 in 2025) of Berkshire's funds on a private jet, Buffett named it "The Indefensible", later renamed "The Indispensable". This act was at odds with his past condemnation of extravagant spending by other CEOs. Buffett sold the jet prior to mid-1999 and has since usually flown with Berkshire's flight services businesses.

Buffett is an avid bridge player, which he plays with Gates and champion player Sharon Osberg; he is said to spend 12 hours a week playing the game. In 2006, he sponsored a bridge match for the Buffett Cup. Modeled on the Ryder Cup in golf—held immediately before it in the same city—the teams are chosen by invitation, with a female team and five male teams provided by each country. When he purchased the Omaha Sun from Stanford Lipsey in 1969, Buffett volunteered to become the first non-Jewish member of Omaha's Highland Club, to set an example of nondiscrimination. According to Lipsey, at that time the Omaha Country Club did not take Jewish members, and the Highland Club had no non-Jewish members. He is a dedicated, lifelong follower of Nebraska football, and attends as many games as his schedule permits. He supported the hire of Bo Pelini, following the 2007 season, stating, "It was getting kind of desperate around here". He watched the 2009 game against Oklahoma from the Nebraska sideline, after being named an honorary assistant coach. Buffett was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2009. Buffett worked with Christopher Webber on an animated series called "Secret Millionaires Club" with chief Andy Heyward of DiC Entertainment. The series features Buffett and Munger and teaches children healthy financial habits. Buffett was raised as a Presbyterian, but has since described himself as agnostic. In December 2006, it was reported that Buffett did not carry a mobile phone, did not have a computer at his desk, and drove his own automobile, a Cadillac DTS. In contrast to that, at the 2018 Berkshire Hathaway's shareholder meeting, he stated he uses Google as his preferred search engine. In 2013 he had an old Nokia flip phone and had sent one email in his entire life. In February 2020, Buffett revealed in a CNBC interview that he had traded in his flip phone for an iPhone 11. Buffett reads five newspapers every day, beginning with the Omaha World Herald, which his company acquired in 2011. Buffett's speeches are known for mixing business discussions with humor. Each year, Buffett presides over Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting in the Qwest Center in Omaha, Nebraska, an event drawing over 20,000 visitors from both the United States and abroad, giving it the nickname "Woodstock of Capitalism". Berkshire's annual reports and letters to shareholders, prepared by Buffett, frequently receive coverage by the financial media. Buffett's writings are known for containing quotations from sources as varied as the Bible and Mae West, as well as advice in a folksy, Midwestern style and numerous jokes. In April 2017, Buffett (an avid Coca-Cola drinker and shareholder in the company) agreed to have his likeness placed on Cherry Coke products in China. Buffett was not compensated for this advertisement. Buffett is very distantly related to the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama. Buffett was a longtime friend of singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett until Jimmy's death in September 2023, and they would often refer to one another as "Uncle Warren" and "Cousin Jimmy". The two took a DNA test which revealed no relation.

## Sources

- Warren Buffett · Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=211518

Source: Wikipedia contributors — https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=211518&oldid=1381115423

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Adaptation notice: Reformatted for XPay; the source may be abridged, restructured or translated. Consult the cited revision for the original.