Warren Edward Buffett was born on 30 August 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska USA, and is known worldwide variously as the “Sage”, “Wizard” or “Oracle of Omaha”, as is currently ranked in the top three richest people in the world by Forbes and Bloomberg, being primarily an extremely knowledgeable investor and financial advisor, also a business magnate, financier and generous philanthropist.
So just how rich is Warren Buffett? According to Forbes, Warren’s net worth in mid-2017 is estimated to be a very impressive $77 billion, the vast majority of his wealth having been accumulated as a result of his consistently successful investing through his company Berkshire Hathaway.
Warren Buffett Net Worth $77 Billion
Warren Buffet is the only son of US Congressman Howard Buffett and mother Leila (née Stahl). Warren went to school in Washington DC, and then to the University of Pennsylvania for two years (including joining the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity) before transferring to the University of Nebraska from where he graduated at nineteen with a BSc in business administration. After unsuccessfully applying to Harvard Business School, Buffett enrolled at Columbia Business School, and graduated with a MSc in economics in 1951. Buffett also attended the New York Institute of Finance.
Even in primary school, Warren Buffett made money in all sorts of ways, including owning second-hand pinball machines, working in his grandfather’s store, selling golf balls, chewing gum, and magazines door-to-door. Buffett’s interest in the stock market and investing began in his schooldays too, sometimes spent in the customers’ lounge of a regional stock brokerage near his father’s office, plus visiting the NYSE when he was 10. At 11, he bought three shares of Cities Service for himself, and three for his sister Doris (founder The Sunshine Lady Foundation). In high school, he invested in a business owned by his father, and bought a farm worked by a tenant farmer.
Warren Buffett began his full-time working career as an investment salesman for Buffett-Falk & Co., then as a securities analyst in Graham-Newman Corp, and subsequently went on to work at Buffett Partnership, Ltd. In 1957 he had three partnerships operating, increasing to five the next year, and which by 1962 made him a millionaire – that year his partnerships had assets of over $7 million, $1 million of which belonged to Buffett.
Buffett’s first private investment was the department store Hochschild, Kohn and Co. However, it was Berkshire Hathaway that brought him huge financial success, firstly from buying the shares of this multinational conglomerate holding company, then becoming chairman in 1965. The company became the portal for virtually all of Buffett’s investments, giving him a spot on the Forbes 400 in 1979, and making him a billionaire by 1990. Warren Buffett is now chairman , CEO and the largest shareholder of the company. In 2008, he was listed by Forbes as the richest person in the world, and in 2012, Time magazine named Buffett one of the most influential people in the world, a position which he has held in every year since, regardless of formal acknowledgement.
In addition to the profits gained from his company, Buffett has accumulated a large amount of his net worth due to forward contracts, the value of which by 2006 was over $2 billion. That same year Buffett announced that he would give away 85% of his Berkshire holdings to five charitable organizations – the largest amount going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-founded with Bill Gates with the aim of reducing poverty and enhancing healthcare – plus others such as Nuclear Threat Initiative, Glide Foundation, and Buffett Foundation, created in order to manage his charitable donations. As a result of his philanthropy, Warren Buffett’s annual salary in recent years amounts to only $100,000.
Buffett’s humble and generous personality has inspired many authors such as Robert Lowenstein, Alice Shroeder, Janet Lowe, and John Train to release books about him. Warren Buffett is also a known writer himself, and has been publishing annual reports and various articles for a number of years, the most prominent of which is “The Super Investors of Graham-and-Doddsville”.
In his personal life, Warren was married to Susan from 1952 until her death in 2004, although they lived separate lives from the late 70s; they have one daughter. In 2006 he married Astrid Menks, with whom he had been co-habiting for many years. Warren Buffett lives in a house in Omaha, which he purchased in 1957 for $31,000. During his free time, Buffett enjoys playing bridge, and has even sponsored a Buffett Cup bridge match.
