Warren Buffett facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Warren Buffett
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Buffett in 2015
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Warren Edward Buffett
August 30, 1930 Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.
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| Years active | 1951–present |
| Known for | Transforming Berkshire Hathaway and his philanthropy |
| Political party | Democratic |
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Susan Thompson
(m. 1952; died 2004)Astrid Menks
(m. 2006) |
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| Family | Buffett family |
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Warren Edward Buffett ( BUF-it; born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is currently the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. As a result of his immense investment success, Buffett is one of the best-known fundamental investors in the world. As of June 2024, he had a net worth of $135 billion, making him the tenth-richest person in the world.
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Early life and education
Warren Edward Buffett was born on 30 August 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, as the second of three children and the only son of Leila (née Stahl) and Congressman Howard 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. While still in high school, he 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 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 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. They later sold the business to a war veteran for a tidy sum of $1200.
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Buffett's interest in the stock market and investing dated back to his schoolboy days he 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 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 of his savings. By the time he finished college, Buffett had amassed $9,800 in savings (about $121,000 today).
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 at 19, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in business administration. After being rejected by Harvard Business School, 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.
Business career
Buffett developed an interest in business and investing during his youth. He began various business ventures and investment partnerships, including one with Benjamin Graham. He created Buffett Partnership Ltd. in 1956 and his investment firm eventually acquired a textile manufacturing firm, Berkshire Hathaway, assuming its name to create 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.
Since 1970, Buffett has 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. He is noted for his adherence to the principles of value investing, and his frugality despite his vast wealth.
Buffett also advocates on the issue of wealth equality in society:
We have learned to turn out lots of goods and services, but we haven't learned as well how to have everybody share in the bounty. The obligation of a society as prosperous as ours is to figure out how nobody gets left too far behind.
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 in net profit, the most it had ever made in a three-month period.
Buffett has pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He founded the Giving Pledge in 2010 with Bill Gates, whereby billionaires pledge to give away at least half of their fortunes.
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.
Buffett married Susan Buffett (born Thompson) in 1952. They had three children, Susie, Howard and Peter. The couple began living separately in 1977, although they remained married until Susan Buffett's death in July 2004. Their daughter, Susie, lives in Omaha, is a national board member of Girls, Inc., and does 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.
His 2006 annual salary was about $100,000, which is small compared to senior executive remuneration in comparable companies. In 2008, he earned a total compensation of $175,000, which included a base salary of just $100,000. He continued to live in the same house in the central Dundee neighborhood of Omaha that he bought in 1958 for $31,500, a fraction of today's value. He also owned a vacation home in Laguna Beach, California, which he purchased for $150,000 in 1971. He sold it for $7.5 million in 2018. In 1989, after spending nearly $6.7 million of Berkshire's funds on a private jet, Buffett named it "The Indefensible". This act was a break from his past condemnation of extravagant purchases by other CEOs and his history of using more public transportation. Buffett sold the jet prior to mid-1999, and has since usually flown with Berkshire's flight services businesses.
Bridge is such a sensational game that I wouldn't mind being in jail if I had three cellmates who were decent players and who were willing to keep the game going twenty-four hours a day.
Buffett is an avid bridge player, which he plays with fellow fan Gates—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.
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.
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 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 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.
Wealth and philanthropy
In 2008, Buffett was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of approximately $62 billion. In 2009, after donating billions of dollars to charity, he was ranked as the second richest man in the United States with a net worth of $37 billion with only Bill Gates ranked higher than Buffett. His net worth had risen to $58.5 billion as of September 2013.
In 1999, Buffett was named the top money manager of the Twentieth Century in a survey by the Carson Group, ahead of Peter Lynch and John Templeton. In 2007, he was listed among Time's 100 Most Influential People in the world. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Buffett, along with Bill Gates, was named the most influential global thinker in Foreign Policy's 2010 report.
Buffett has written several times of his belief that, in a market economy, the rich earn outsized rewards for their talents. His children will not inherit a significant proportion of his wealth. He once commented, "I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing".
Buffett had long stated his intention to give away his fortune to charity, and in June 2006, he announced a new plan to give 83% of it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). He pledged about the equivalent of 10 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (worth approximately $30.7 billion as of June 23, 2006), making it the largest charitable donation in history, and Buffett one of the leaders of philanthrocapitalism. The foundation will receive 5% of the total each July, beginning in 2006. The pledge is conditional upon three requirements:
- Bill or Melinda Gates must be alive and active in BMGF
- BMGF must continue to qualify as a charity
- Each year BMGF must give away an amount equal to the prior year's Berkshire gift plus the additional 5% of net assets as required of all US foundations
Buffett joined the Gates Foundation's board, but did not plan to be actively involved in the foundation's investments. Buffett announced his resignation as a trustee of the Gates Foundation on June 23, 2021.
This represented a significant shift from Buffett's previous statements, to the effect that most of his fortune would pass to his Buffett Foundation. The bulk of the estate of his wife, valued at $2.6 billion, went there when she died in 2004. He also pledged $50 million to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, in Washington, where he began serving as an adviser in 2002.
In 2006, he auctioned his 2001 Lincoln Town Car on eBay to raise money for Girls, Inc. In 2007, he auctioned a luncheon with himself that raised a final bid of $650,100 for the Glide Foundation. Later auctions raised $2.1 million $1.7 million and $3.5 million. The winners traditionally dine with Buffett at New York's Smith and Wollensky steak house. The restaurant donates at least $10,000 to Glide each year to host the meal.
In 2009, Ralph Nader wrote the book Only the Super Rich Can Save Us, a novel about "a movement of billionaires led by Warren Buffett and featuring, among others, Ted Turner, George Soros and Barry Diller, who use their fortunes to clean up America". On C-SPAN BookTV, Nader said Buffett invited him to breakfast after the book came out and was "quite intrigued by the book". He also told Nader of his plan to get "billionaires all over the world to donate 50% of their estate to charity or good works". On December 9, 2010, Buffett, Bill Gates, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed a promise they called the "Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge", in which they promise to donate to charity at least half of their wealth, and invite other wealthy people to follow suit. In 2018, after making almost $3.4 billion donations, Buffett was ranked 3rd in the Forbes' List of Billionaire 2018.
Warren Buffett continues to help fund and support his family's individual foundations which include Susan Buffett's Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, Susan Alice Buffett's Sherwood Foundation, Howard Graham Buffett's Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and Peter Buffett's NoVo Foundation. Warren Buffett was also supportive of his sister Doris Buffett's Letters Foundation and Learning By Giving Foundation.
In November 2022, Warren Buffett made a donation of $750 million in Berkshire Hathaway shares to four charitable foundations run by his children. 1.5 million Class B shares of his conglomerate to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after his first wife. He also transferred 300,000 Class B shares each to three funds managed by his children: the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the NoVo Foundation.
As of 2023[update], Buffett has given over $50 billion to charitable causes.
Political and public policy views
Health care
Buffett described the health care reform under President Barack Obama as insufficient to deal with the costs of health care in the US, though he supports its aim of expanding health insurance coverage. Buffett compared health care costs to a tapeworm, saying that they compromise US economic competitiveness by increasing manufacturing costs. Buffett said in 2010 that it was not sustainable for the U.S. to devote 17% of its GDP to healthcare expenditure, noting that many other nations spent a much smaller proportion of their GDP on health expenditures, with better healthcare outcomes. Buffett said, "If you want the very best, I mean if you want to spend a million dollars to prolong your life 3 months in a coma or something then the US is probably the best", but he also said that other countries spend much less and receive much more in health care value (visits, hospital beds, doctors and nurses per capita).
Buffett faults the incentives in the United States medical industry, that payers reimburse doctors for procedures (fee-for-service) leading to unnecessary care (overutilization), instead of paying for results. He cited Atul Gawande's 2009 article in the New Yorker as a useful consideration of US health care, with its documentation of unwarranted variation in Medicare expenditures between McAllen, Texas and El Paso, Texas. Buffett raised the problem of lobbying by the medical industry, saying that they are very focused on maintaining their income.
Curbing population growth
Buffett has expressed concerns about unchecked population growth. In 2009, he met with several other billionaires to discuss healthcare, education and slowing population growth. Called "The Good Club" by an insider, the billionaires had given away $45 billion to philanthropic causes and included Oprah Winfrey, Michael Bloomberg and David Rockefeller, Jr.
Taxes
Buffett stated that he only paid 19% of his income for 2006 ($48.1 million) in total federal taxes (due to their source as dividends and capital gains) while his employees paid 33% of theirs, despite making much less money. Regarding how little he pays in taxes compared to his employees, he said, "How can this be fair? How can this be right? There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
Buffett favors the inheritance tax, saying that repealing it would be like "choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics". In 2007, Buffett testified before the Senate and urged them to preserve the estate tax so as to avoid a plutocracy. Some critics argued that Buffett (through Berkshire Hathaway) has a personal interest in the continuation of the estate tax, since Berkshire Hathaway benefited from the estate tax in past business dealings and had developed and marketed insurance policies to protect policy holders against future estate tax payments.
Buffett believes government should not be in the business of gambling, or legalizing casinos, calling it a tax on ignorance.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies
In an interview with CNBC in January 2018, Buffett said that the recent craze over Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies won't end well, adding that "when it happens or how or anything else, I don't know". But he said he would not take a short position on bitcoin futures.
Film and television
Aside from countless television appearances on various news programs, Buffett has appeared in numerous films and TV programs, both documentary, and fiction. Some film and television cameos he has made include Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), The Office (U.S.), All My Children, and Entourage (2015). He has been a guest 10 times on Charlie Rose, and was the subject of the HBO documentary feature Becoming Warren Buffett (2017) and the BBC production The World's Greatest Money Maker (2009).
Warren Buffett quotes
- "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it."
- "Take the job that you would take if you were independently wealthy."
- "Criticize by category — praise by name."
- "Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1."
- "People will always try to stop you doing the right thing if it is unconventional."
See also
In Spanish: Warren Buffett para niños
