Warren Buffett's Daughter-In-Law Says He Used To Give $10K Christmas Cash — But Switched To Stocks Because 'As Soon As We Got Home, We'd Spend It!'

Some families hand out sweaters, scented candles, or whatever they grabbed during a last-minute department-store sprint. But Warren Buffett — the famously frugal billionaire and longtime chairman of Berkshire Hathaway — had a very different approach to holiday giving. The Oracle of Omaha treated his loved ones the same way he treats the market: with a long game in mind.

For years, Buffett’s go-to Christmas tradition was pure shock value. “He would always give each of us $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills. As soon as we got home, we’d spend it — whooo!” Mary Buffett told ThinkAdvisor in 2019.

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Mary, who was married to Buffett’s son Peter from 1980 to 1993, remembers those gift-filled Decembers as clearly as the lessons that came with them. Because eventually, Buffett realized the cash was disappearing faster than wrapping paper on Christmas morning.

So he switched tactics.

“One Christmas there was an envelope with a letter from him,” she said. “Instead of cash, he’d given us $10,000 worth of shares in a company he’d recently bought, a trust Coca-Cola had. He said to either cash them in or keep them.”

Mary kept them. And the payoff proved exactly why Buffett made the switch. “I thought, ‘Well, [this stock] is worth more than $10,000.’ So I kept it, and it kept going up.”

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From that Christmas forward, the gifts became a yearly investing nudge. “Then, every year when he’d give us stock — Wells Fargo being one of them — I would just buy more of it because I knew it was going to go up,” Mary said. The lesson wasn’t subtle. Cash disappears. Ownership builds wealth.

Consider what a single year’s worth of stock might look like over time. Wells Fargo traded around $1 a share in 1990; today it’s near $85. A $10,000 holiday gift back then — about 10,000 shares — would now be worth roughly $850,000, before counting dividends. And when you think about receiving investments like that Christmas after Christmas, the long-term compounding could easily reach into the millions.

Mary told ThinkAdvisor that Buffett talked about one thing “in the privacy of his own home”: investing. “That’s all he talked about!” she recalled. When the family gathered in Laguna over the holidays, big names from business would show up, “and they’d all talk about companies. Investing was the only thing Warren ever talked about!”

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Those conversations shaped her entire career. They turned her from a business executive with a background at Columbia Records and Hugh Hefner’s music publishing companies into a bestselling author whose books — starting with “Buffettology”— translated Buffett’s thinking for everyday investors. She absorbed his focus on buying understandable businesses, avoiding IPOs, and steering clear of companies that rely on research and development “to survive.”

The Christmas-stock story fits right into that worldview. Buffett wasn’t handing out luxury gifts or trying to impress anyone. He was showing — quietly, almost playfully — how wealth is built in real life.

Sure, $10,000 in cash tucked neatly into an envelope is unforgettable. But Buffett knew the truth: money gets spent, but ownership compounds. And sometimes the most meaningful holiday gift isn’t what sits under the tree. It’s what keeps growing long after the season ends.

Not everyone has a relative handing out $10,000 in stock each year, but talking with an experienced financial advisor can help families build long-term plans, choose investments that fit their goals, and create their own version of steady holiday compounding.

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This article Warren Buffett's Daughter-In-Law Says He Used To Give $10K Christmas Cash — But Switched To Stocks Because 'As Soon As We Got Home, We'd Spend It!' originally appeared on Benzinga.com

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