Here are facts about warren buffet that you probably didn’t know!
10 - Wait, at what age?!
By now you’re well aware of the fact that Warren Buffett is super rich.
And he’s been rich for a lonnnnnng time now.
However, did you guys know that he earned basically all of the money he’s had since
his 50th birthday!
About 99 percent of it in fact.
This one is basically math and the power of compounding.
By the time he reached 52, he was worth just a measly $376 million dollars.
Now compare that to the $80 and a half billion he’s worth now!
Thanks to continued smart investing on the part of Buffett, and the power of compounding,
he became a billionaire by age 56.
Over the last 30 years, his net worth has only continued to skyrocket.
9 - Hey, at least he’s sent one!
Maybe Hillary Clinton could learn a thing or two from Warren Buffett.
Somehow, someway, Buffett has only sent ONE email in his entire life.
He runs Berkshire Hathaway using 20th century technology!
He prefers to conduct his empire the old fashioned way, or if he’s feeling fancy, he might
call someone on his Nokia Flip phone.
The one email he did send was to Jeff Raikes of Microsoft back in 1997.
In an interview with CNN, Buffett claimed that that email ended up in court in Minneapolis...so
he’s pretty much shied away from email ever since.
Buffet was responding to an email sent by Raikes, who was analyzing the pros and cons
of investing with Microsoft.
Buffett is known to personally avoid technology for the most part, opting to not keep a computer
on his work desk.
However, he still has plenty of investments in the technology sector….in a roundabout
way at least.
At the very least, he fully understands the prominent place technology has in our economy
as he’s sold off Berkshire’s stakes in FOX and IBM.
Those moves are a that Buffett doesn’t have much confidence in their ability to thrive
against new forms of technology such as Netflix and Google.
8 - Did someone say junk food?
Imagine for a second that you’re worth $80.5 BILLION dollars like Warren Buffet.
Now think of all the extravagant meals you could have any time you wanted.
It’s impossible to go broke eating the most expensive food as much as possible when you’re
worth as much as Warren Buffett.
Buuuuuut, for Warren Buffett, he prefers a cheeseburger and cherry coke to a fancy steak
and caviar that many high rollers love to indulge in.
But of course, Buffet isn’t your average multi billionaire.
Somehow, the 87-year old Buffett faces no such dietary restrictions.
In fact, by his own estimation he consumes somewhere in the ballpark of 2,700 calories
per day.
This is achieved largely because he drinks at least FIVE 12 ounce cokes every day, starting
with one for breakfast.
Sometimes, he’ll even eat chocolate chip ice cream for breakfast!
And then there’s his love for McDonald’s.
Buffett actually eats breakfast at Mickie D’s almost every single day.
CNBC reported that once, while dining with Bill Gates at Mickey D’s, Buffett picked
up the tab.
But get this: He used coupons to pay!
Now that’s……….I guess the type of discipline you need to invest like Buffett.
So while the rest of us are counting carbs, Buffett is chowing down on burgers, ice cream
and bacon egg and cheese sandwiches while chugging almost half a dozen Cokes every day.
Not only has he avoided diabetes and morbid obesity, he’s managed to make it 87.
7 - Buffet’s first business was…...
From the time he was old enough to understand that you need money in order to survive, Warren
Buffett has been an entrepreneur.
At age seven, he began making money by selling chewing gum and sodas to his classmates.
He also had his own paper route, delivering newspapers for the Washington Post.
By age 11, he made his first ever investment.
It was December 7, 1941 the same day Pearl Harbor happened, when Buffett bought three
shares of stock in Citgo and three for his sister for a price of $38.
He sold used golf balls, he buffed cars, and by the time he was 16, he had amassed roughly
53 thousand dollars in today’s money!
By age 17, he had his own business setting up pinball machines in barbershops.
These days, he says he wants kids to take a page out of his book and become entrepreneurs
as well.
That’s why he helped create The Secret Millionaires Club to help kids start their own businesses
early in life so they can develop good financial habits early on in life...which he argues
will help them later on.
6 - As a Kid, He was a Troublemaker Despite Buffett’s entrepreneurial endeavors
as a kid, Buffett was apparently one extremely mischievous little kid.
In his biography, The Snowball, Buffett recounts how he and his friends would hit up their
local Sears and quote “rob the place blind”.
He confessed to stealing hundreds of golf balls, which if you consider the fact that
he sold golf balls as a young kid, you could pretty much make the case that he was running
organized crime unit at a young age!
Okay, let’s not get too carried away here.
Anyways, he also reportedly had poor grades for a little while in school and even ran
away from home.
He also decided to sort of give a proverbial middle finger to all of his teachers once.
Back in those days, AT&T was a stock that apparently all of Buffett’s teachers owned
at one time.
And of course, Buffett had a reputation for knowing what he was doing in the market.
He came to the conclusion that AT&T was a company that was overvalued, and he decided
to short the stock, and then he told all this teachers about it just to spite them.
Buuuuuut they knew he was right!
Of course, since then he’s gotten his act together and has become one of the world’s
most prolific investors and philanthropist.
5 - Which granddaughter?!
In 2008, reports claimed that Buffett had disowned his adopted granddaughter, Nicole.
According to Reuters, Nicole, who was the adopted daughter of Buffett's son, Peter,
participated in a documentary called “The One Percent”, which was a documentary about
family members of the country’s wealthiest people.
This apparently caused some friction within the family.
Nicole claimed that she decided to share what it’s like to be Buffett’s granddaughter,
and she didn’t think it was a big deal.
Buuut it created a huge estrangement from Buffett to the extent that he disowned Nicole
and her twin sister.
Reuters also reached out to a source close to the family who pointed out that Buffett
wasn’t all that close to Nicole, since she and her twin sister were adopted in their
late teens.
Buffett allegedly rarely saw either of them, even though he paid for their schooling and
living expenses into their late 20’s.
Apparently Buffett was upset that they spoke about his private life in a documentary while
misrepresenting their relationship with him, which if you ask me, I’m completely on his
side, and I have no issues with this one!
4 - Who really should go to college?!
Given that he was a hard working entrepreneur at an early age, Buffett had acquired quite
a bit of wealth by the time he was at an age for college.
The fact that he already had the tools to run a business and he was already earning
more money than his teachers, he really saw no reason to go to college, a fact that I’d
agree with today!
However, his father convinced him to go, and he eventually attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
and then went to business school at Columbia where he earned his Masters of Science in
Economics….and believe it or not, he went there after Harvard Business school rejected
him.
Buffett had even already told a friend, "Join me at Harvard."
But it was this rejection that helped shape Buffett into the investor he is today.
These days, Buffett cautions that higher education isn’t for everyone and everyone would be
wise to invest in themselves.
3 - Floyd “Money” Mayweather You might be surprised to know that Warren
Buffett and Floyd Mayweather are actually friends.
Then again, neither of them do things the conventional way, and they both love to make
money since it’s another way of keeping score in life, so it sort of makes sense.
After watching Floyd Mayweather taking on and beating Marcos Maidana, Buffett praised
Mayweather’s fighting, asserting that it was much easier to be an investor than a boxer.
For his part, Mayweather has listed Buffett as one of his inspirations, claiming he looks
up to his fellow billionaire.
Mayweather also claimed that he looked up to Bill Gates and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark
Cuban, while growing up in the difficult neighborhoods of Grand Rapids Michigan.
These two are certainly an odd pairing, but hey they seems to enjoy each other’s company.
Buffett even visited Mayweather and The Money Team at Mayweather’s boxing club and before
Mayweather’s rematch with Maidana.
Buffet and Mayweather both got in front of the green screen and posed like they’re
boxing each other for pics!
2 - Dale Carnegie’s Public Speaking Course To understand the one of most successful people
in the world, it helps to understand one of Buffett’s most important moments in his
life.
Before he took the Dale Carnegie course for public speaking he was terrified of public
speaking.
He said that taking the course changed his life, and it taught him how to face his fears.
Buffett claimed that he was so terrified that he just couldn't speak in public and that
he’d throw up!
In fact, he’d arranged his life so that he never had to get up in front of anybody.
When he was 19, Buffett enrolled in Dale Carnegie’s course for public speaking and it changed
his life.
While he has two degrees, Buffet says the most important degree that he got was from
the Dale Carnegie course, and it’s the only degree he proudly hangs on his office wall.
Buffet credits this course for giving him the confidence to speak in public and propose
to his first wife Susan, to whom he was married for 52 years.
1 - Reputation Above all Else
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.
If you think about that, you'll do things differently.”
That’s how Buffett runs his life, and it’s how he handles his business as well.
It provides some insight into his guiding philosophy.
In fact, he’s said that his reputation is his most important asset.
For a guy worth more than $80 billion, that’s really saying something.
In a memo to his managers at Berkshire he once wrote...We can afford to lose money — even
a lot of money.
But we can't afford to lose reputation — even a shred of reputation."
He’s even said a similar quote, saying to Salomon Brothers employees quote, “lose
money for the firm and I will be understanding; lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and
I will be ruthless.”
Yikes, didn’t see THAT in Warren Buffett!
Take away all the money, the success and all of the other things, the thing that matters
most to Buffett, is his reputation.
Here’s what’s next!