Warren Buffett: how the frugal billionaire spends his fortune, from McDonald’s breakfasts to the occasional splurge

The vast majority of Buffett’s net worth is tied to Berkshire Hathaway, his publicly traded conglomerate that owns businesses like Geico and See’s Candies and holds multibillion-dollar stakes in companies like Apple and Coca-Cola.

Berkshire’s latest proxy statement shows that Buffett owns about 15.1% of Berkshire — a stake valued at over $130 billion.

Berkshire Hathaway itself owns over $1 trillion in assets, Insider previously reported.

The vast majority of Buffett’s wealth was earned after his 50th birthday. His salary at Berkshire Hathaway last year was just $100,000, the same as it’s been the last 40 years, and he reimbursed the company $50,000 in part to cover his personal calls and postage.

The company spent triple Buffett’s yearly salary — $313,595 — on his personal and home security last year, according to the company’s proxy statement.

Buffett married his first wife, Susan Buffett, in 1952. Together they had three children: Susie, Howard, and Peter. Though he and Susan remained married until Susan’s death in 2004, they had lived apart since the 1970s. He married his second wife and longtime companion, Astrid Menks, in 2006.

When Susie was born, Buffett apparently turned a dresser drawer into a bassinet for her to sleep in, according to Roger Lowenstein’s 2008 biography of the billionaire. For his second child, Howard, he borrowed a crib.

Buffett lives in a modest home in Omaha, Nebraska, which he once called the “third-best investment” he’s ever made in a letter to Berkshire shareholders.

He bought the home for $31,500 in 1958 — adjusted for inflation, that’s about $342,000. It’s now worth an estimated $1.4 million, according to Zillow, and spans 6,280 square feet with five bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms.

Buffett has made some security upgrades since buying it and it’s now guarded by fences and security cameras.

Unlike many other ultra-wealthy individuals, Buffett has long driven a fairly modest set of wheels.

He previously drove a 2001 Lincoln Town Car with a license plate that read “THRIFTY” for about a decade, before auctioning it off for charity and replacing it with a 2006 Cadillac DTS. In 2014, he replaced the DTS with a Cadillac XTS, according to Forbes.

“The truth is, I only drive about 3,500 miles a year so I will buy a new car very infrequently,” Buffett once told Forbes.

Despite the fact that Berkshire Hathaway is a major Apple shareholder, Buffett didn’t upgrade to a smartphone until 2020.

Before that he preferred the Samsung SCH-U320, which can be bought on eBay for under $20.

Though Buffett did make the switch to an iPhone eventually, he told CNBC that he just uses it “as a phone.”

Buffett once told Fortune that he eats “like a six-year-old.” He gets his breakfast at McDonald’s almost every morning on the way to work.

In 2017, he was spending no more than $3.17 on his order, paying with exact change, he said in the HBO documentary “Becoming Warren Buffett.” He also drinks at least five Cokes a day.

Warren Buffett is considered one of the world’s most generous philanthropists. He pledged in 2006 to donate about 85% of his Berkshire Class A shares to five foundations: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (named after his late wife), and three foundations run by his three children.

He teamed up with Bill and Melinda Gates in 2010 to form The Giving Pledge, an initiative that asks the world’s wealthiest people to dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. Buffett himself has pledged that 99% of his wealth will go to philanthropy during his lifetime or upon his death.

As of 2023, the shares he’s already given away were worth about $50 billion based on their value at the time of donation, or about $130 billion given Berkshire Hathaway’s stock value at the time. If Buffett had kept those shares rather than donating them, he’d likely be the world’s wealthiest person with a net worth of nearly $300 billion.

Buffett plans on leaving his kids $2 billion each, the Washington Post reported in 2014. He once said in a letter to shareholders that he recommends that super-wealthy families “leave the children enough so that they can do anything but not enough that they can do nothing.”

“There are things money can’t buy,” Buffett once said at a shareholder’s meeting. “I don’t think standard of living equates with cost of living beyond a certain point. My life couldn’t be happier. In fact, it’d be worse if I had six or eight houses. So, I have everything I need to have, and I don’t need any more because it doesn’t make a difference after a point.”