Warren Buffett's Childhood and His Parents' Upbringing | Mother's Strategy Memo #2

“Mother’s Strategy Memo” is a weekly series that features one billionaire, examining what kind of child they were and how their parents raised them, based on biographies and their own words.

It is written by a mother working at a foreign-affiliated company. Her catchphrase is, “I’m going to make my child a billionaire.” But I am not a billionaire. I read biographies and try them out on my second-grade daughter, only to have them backfire.

Introduction (A word from Mom)

This week’s person is Warren Buffett. He is one of the world’s most well-known investors, having long led the American company Berkshire Hathaway.

Buffett writes a long letter to shareholders every year. In those letters, stories from his childhood sometimes appear. This time, I focused on reading those letters written by the man himself. While reading, I started collecting and counting the plastic bottle caps in my house, and my husband asked me, “What kind of survey is this?”

Childhood

6 bottles for 25 cents

In his 1989 letter to shareholders, Buffett wrote: “I think my first taste of Coca-Cola was in 1935 or 1936. What is certain is that in 1936, I bought a six-pack of Coke for 25 cents at my family’s grocery store, ‘Buffett & Son,’ and started selling them in the neighborhood for 5 cents each.”

In 1936, Buffett was about 5 or 6 years old. He bought 6 bottles for 25 cents and sold 6 bottles for 30 cents. The profit was 5 cents.

In his 1994 letter, he added this to the story: “The real money was in the syrup. It took me 50 years to realize that.”

No selling gum by the piece

According to Buffett’s biography, ‘The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life’ (by Alice Schroeder), the first money he earned was from selling chewing gum. From the age of 6, he would buy packs of gum at his grandfather’s store for 3 cents and go around to neighboring houses to sell them for 5 cents.

Once, a neighbor woman asked, “Can I have one piece?” Buffett’s answer was, “I don’t sell them individually.” He told the biographer, “In other words, I had principles.”

According to the biography, Coke was more profitable than gum.

Counting bottle caps

The same biography also tells the story of him going around to gas stations all over town to collect bottle caps that had fallen into the indentations under the iceboxes. When customers opened their sodas, the caps would fall right in. Pepsi, root beer, Coca-Cola, ginger ale. After dinner, he would line up the caps on old newspapers spread out in the living room, categorize them, and count them.

By counting them, he could tell which drink was the most popular. The biography writes that Buffett became obsessed with the fact that “free information was lying around untouched,” and that “categorizing and counting them put his mind at ease.”

“1,000 Ways to Make $1,000”

According to the biography, he was drawn to a book on a library shelf with a silver cover that shone like a pile of coins, and when he opened it, intrigued by the title, he was immediately captivated. The book was ‘1,000 Ways to Make $1,000.’ Regarding the story about bathroom scales, he told the biographer, “I’ll buy one scale, and with the profit from that, I’ll buy another. Soon I’ll have 20 scales, and everyone will weigh themselves 50 times a day.”

Age 11, First Stock

In his 2018 letter to shareholders, Buffett wrote: ‘In 1942, I was 11 years old, and I invested all $114.75 I had saved since I was 6. I bought three shares of preferred stock in a company called Cities Service.’

However, the price dropped immediately. In his 2023 letter, he noted, ‘By the time school was out, I was down about $5.’

According to his biography, his sister Doris had also bought stock at the same time, and she complained to him almost every day on the way to school that ‘the stock went down.’ They sold it once the price recovered, making a $5 profit between the two of them. However, the stock price went much higher afterward. According to the biography, Buffett learned three lessons from this event, two of which were not to get too hung up on the purchase price and not to rush into taking a small profit.

Paper Route and Tax Return at 13

His father became a member of the U.S. Congress, and the family moved to the capital, Washington D.C. There, Buffett began a paper route.

In a 2003 letter, he wrote: ‘In 1944, as a 13-year-old paperboy, I filed my first tax return. The return was three pages long. After deducting expenses such as $35 for a bicycle, my tax was $7.’

In a 1994 letter, he wrote that about half of his initial investment capital came from money he earned delivering newspapers in the 1940s.

The Japanese version of his biography states that the tax return was at the end of 1944 and that he included a wristwatch as an expense in addition to the bicycle, which differs slightly from his own letter (where the expense was $35 for the bicycle).

Pinball Company

According to his biography, in his final year of high school at age 17, he approached his friend Don Danly to start a joint venture where they bought an old pinball machine for $25 and placed it in a barbershop. The company was named ‘Wilson Coin-Operated Machine.’ He reportedly approached the barbershop owner by saying, ‘This is a proposal from President Wilson.’ Eventually, ‘President Wilson’s Pinball Machines’ grew to seven or eight machines in barbershops around town.

Working at Grandfather’s Store

Buffett also worked at his grandfather’s grocery store. In an article published in November 2025, he wrote that his partner Charlie Munger worked 10 hours a day at that store in the summer of 1940 for $2, and that he himself did similar work the following year. However, in a 2021 letter, he stated that he began working there in 1942, which creates a discrepancy in the years.

How Did His Parents Raise Him?

His Father Communicated Indirectly

His father, Howard Buffett, was a stockbroker who later became a member of Congress. In an interview for his biography, Buffett said, ‘I learned how to live my life from my father. I have never met anyone like him since.’

In the spring of 1945, when he entered high school in Washington, his father told him that if things continued as they were, he would have to quit his paper route. His father said, ‘It is up to you whether you continue to behave this way or do something that develops your potential. But if you don’t, you will have to quit the paper route.’ He reflected on this in an interview for his biography: ‘I realized then. My father was letting me know he was disappointed in me in an indirect way. That hit me much harder than being told not to do this or that.’

For the teenage Buffett, the paper route was an important place where he could earn his own money and make his own decisions. His father said he would have to quit, but he phrased it in a way that left the decision up to him, saying it was ‘up to you.’

The Family Store Was the First Supplier

Whether it was cola or gum, his supplier was his grandfather’s grocery store. This means that when the children started their small businesses, the family store served as their gateway.

If you want to try this at home

• Preschool: Collect bottle caps or snack bags from around the house and try counting them by type. Guess which one there is the most of.

• Early Elementary: Open a family “store.” Let the child decide how much to sell each item from a 6-pack of snacks for. Have the child decide whether or not to sell them individually.

• Upper Elementary: For money the child has earned or saved themselves, keep a record of money coming in, money spent, and money remaining. If the topic of stocks or similar comes up, also talk about how prices can drop and the principal can decrease.

The 4-panel comics for this week were posted one per day on X (@billion_mom) and note. This article is a summary of that week.

Sources

• Warren Buffett, “Letters to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders” 1989, 1994, 2003, 2018, 2021, 2023, and November 2025 texts

• Alice Schroeder, “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Vol. 1)” Translated by Iwan Fushimi, Nikkei Business Bunko, June 2, 2014, 1st printing. ISBN 978-4-532-19733-9

*Quotes from the letters to shareholders are my own translations from the original English. Quotes from “The Snowball” are from the Japanese edition.

*Amazon links in the text are affiliate links (PR).

About this series

*The comics in this series are fictional. The anecdotes of the billionaires featured use only information verified by their own words or biographies, and the sources are written within the articles. If you notice any errors, please let me know in the comments.