How billionaire Warren Buffett spends his time and money
Investing legend Warren Buffett is one of the richest people on Earth. But based on his lifestyle, you wouldn’t know it.
The son of four-term congressman and investor Howard Buffett, the younger Buffett amassed his estimated $145 billion fortune through his holding company Berkshire Hathaway. Yet compared to his fellow billionaires, Buffett has been said to live a relatively modest lifestyle. Instead of buying up mega-mansions and frequently dining at Michelin-starred restaurants, the Oracle of Omaha has opted for a comparably quieter life, showing he’s not quite like the others — except for his private jet, of course.
The Berkshire Hathaway chairman likes to drink five Cokes a day , plays bridge, and as of 2019, used a $20 Samsung flip phone .
He’s not keen on some of the status symbols other billionaires partake in. You won’t find Buffett hosting an extravagant Venice wedding , like Jeff Bezos — or snapping up land in Hawaii amid local opposition, like Mark Zuckerberg.
Buffett once said in a letter that “some material things make my life more enjoyable; many, however, would not.”
He said he likes owning “an expensive private plane” — more on “The Indispensable” later — but that owning “a half-dozen homes would be a burden.”
“Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner,” he said.
Buffett famously still lives in the same five-bedroom 1921-house in Omaha, Nebraska that he purchased for $31,500 in 1958 at just 28-years-old, according to Architectural Digest .
“For the $31,500 I paid for our house, my family and I gained 52 years of terrific memories with more to come,” he said in a 2010 letter .
On the other hand, the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, is reportedly building out a family compound in Austin, Texas; he’s also starting to build out his own company town .
“All things considered, the third best investment I ever made was the purchase of my home, though I would have made far more money had I instead rented and used the purchase money to buy stocks,” Buffett said in the letter.
Instead of indulging in high-end private chefs or dining at fancy restaurants, Buffett opts for a quicker, cheaper diet.
“I eat like a 6-year-old,” Buffett told Fortune in 2015.
Buffett enjoys a daily $3.17 breakfast from McDonald’s, choosing between either two sausage patties, a sausage, egg, and cheese, or a bacon, egg, and cheese accompanied by a Coke, the billionaire disclosed in a 2017 HBO documentary about his life, Fortune reported. He then typically takes lunch at Dairy Queen, the outlet added.
In his and Melinda Gates’ 2017 annual letter , Bill Gates recalled a time when Buffett offered to pay for their meal at McDonald’s with coupons he dug out of his pocket.
Buffett’s biggest contradiction to his otherwise relatively frugal lifestyle would be his private jet.
In 1986, the billionaire — who once drove a car with a license plate that read “THRIFTY” for about a decade — bought a used jet for $850,000. After using it for two years, he sold it and bought another used jet for $6.7 million, he said in a 1989 shareholder letter .
Buffett said he struggled with the extravagant purchase. He compared the rising cost of purchasing planes to that of multiplying bacteria. Something his long-time friend and business partner Charlie Munger said was “degrading to the bacteria.”
In the letter, Buffett dramatically wrote “it will not be long before Berkshire’s entire net worth is consumed by its jet.”
Buffett later said his “own attitude” on the jet could be summarized by a prayer attributed to St. Augustine; as he “contemplated leaving a life of secular pleasures to become a priest,” Buffett wrote that the priest pled, “Help me, Oh Lord, to become chaste – but not yet.”
Three years later in his 1992 letter to shareholders, Buffett said he found the thought of retiring the jet “even more revolting” than the thought of “retiring the Chairman.”
“For years I argued passionately against corporate jets. But finally my dogma was run over by my karma,” he wrote.
He originally nicknamed the jet “The Indefensible” before later rebranding it to “The Indispensable,” according to Business Insider .
The cost of a private jet extends beyond its owner; a 2024 study found that it takes two hours of flight for the typical small plane to emit more CO2 than the average person does in a year.
Other than the likes of Bill Gates, who is well known for his philanthropic ventures, not many billionaires are known to consistently give large chunks of their wealth to charity.
In 2010, Buffett pledged to donate more than 99% of his wealth during his lifetime or after his death. In a letter committing to donating nearly all of his money, the investor said that even with this pledge it “will leave my lifestyle untouched and that of my children as well.”
Buffett is the tenth richest person in the world, according to Forbes’s billionaire list , sliding down the ranking amid his continuous large donations to charities of his choosing.
In June, the value investor made his largest donation yet , giving away Berkshire shares worth $6 billion. Last November, Buffett had donated another 2.4 million Berkshire shares .
So far, Buffett has donated over $60 billion since he began giving away large sums of his wealth in 2006.
In a letter announcing his November donation, Buffett said that his late first wife had left $10 million to each of their three children, a move the investing mogul described as “the first large gift we had given to any of them.”
“These bequests reflected our belief that hugely wealthy parents should leave their children enough so they can do anything but not enough that they can do nothing,” he wrote.
Buffett added that he “never wished to create a dynasty” with his wealth.
He goes on to describe his “lucky streak” that began with his birth “as a white male.” Buffett said that his “huge sum” of money can be “passed along to others who were given a very short straw at birth.”
Buffett wrote that he and his first and second wives “shared a view that equal opportunity should begin at birth and extreme ‘look-at-me’ styles of living should be legal but not admirable.” He added, “As a family, we have had everything we needed or simply liked, but we have not sought enjoyment from the fact that others craved what we had.”
In his giving pledge letter, Buffett said if his family were to use “more than 1%” of his wealth on themselves, “neither our happiness nor our well-being would be enhanced.”