There’s so much talk about how Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, has so much money. How did he get to where he is today, and how did he make such an extensive financial portfolio?
Warren Buffett is a self-proclaimed self-made billionaire. He hasn’t inherited his money or portfolio but instead started from nothing and worked his way to the top. He started small, and over the decades of his life, turned that nothing into billions.
Below, we’re going to dive into how Warren Buffett became one of the most successful investors of all time and his path through entrepreneurship, and his dominating career in the world of business.
What Has Buffett Self Made?
Warren Buffett is hailed as one of the wealthiest and most successful businessmen of all time. Born in 1930, as of 2020, he is worth an incredible $82.3 billion and owns and has shares in multiple global companies.
Some of these companies include Coca-Cola, American Express, Wells Fargo, Geico, Goldman Sachs, Duracell, Dairy Queen (the parent company of OREO), NetJets, Fruit of the Loom, and many more. He has owned shares and owned different parts of different companies throughout his lifetime.
With the average American making around $44,720 per year, it would take them more than 1.6 million years to make the same bank balance Buffett has.
Here’s an insight into how he does it!
To put it another way, Buffett has more wealth than New York City’s entire budget was for 2014. That means he could have paid to run the city for a whole year and still would have had a few billion left over on the side. No matter what you think about one man owning this amount of wealth, there’s no denying that Buffett has played his cards right at every turn.
Business from a Young Age
It’s well known that Buffett showed an interest in the business world from a young age. In an interview, he claims that it all started when it was seven years old titled One Thousand Ways to Make $1,000, a book he borrowed from the Omaha Public Library.
From here, he founded many successful business ventures, including selling chewing gum, weekly magazines, and Coca Cola bottles, that he went around and sold door to door in his local neighborhood. He also worked in a store own by his grandfather.
When he moved up to high school, he was still selling newspapers, stamps, golf balls, and detailed cars. Of course, these aren’t the ventures that made Buffett his billions, but they definitely showed that he had what it takes from a young age to make it in the business world.
Even when he was ten years old, he visited New York and purposefully took the time out to visit the New year Stock Exchange. A year later, he purchased his first Cities Services Preferred shares (three for himself and three for his sister).
During his teenage years, he invested in his father’s business and purchased his own 40-acre piece of farmland worked by a tenant farmer. This was when he was only 14, and paid $1,200 for it that he had in his savings account. At the end of his college years, Buffett had around $9,800 in his savings account.
The Key to His Wealth
When you try to pinpoint precisely how Buffett has made so many billions over the last few decades, there’s a lot of lessons we can learn from him. Of course, he has a business-orientated mind that helps him spot excellent long-term investment opportunities, and this is a skill that not many people have.
However, it’s Buffett’s other ways of living and looking at life that he claims helped him get to where he is today.
For example, Buffett is famous for living frugally. Despite his many billions, he still lives in the Omaha house he bought for $31,500 back in 1958. He eats an affordable breakfast at McDonald’s every single day. While many businessmen and millionaires may drive the fanciest sportscars available at the time, Buffett drove the same Cadillac for years before his daughter bought him a new one in 2014.
It was nothing fancy, and Warren said in a BBC interview that ‘I only drive around 3,500 miles a year, so it’s really not worth me getting anything too special’. He then donated his old Cadillac to a non-profit organization.
Most other aspects of Warren’s life are the same as this. He enjoys affordable hobbies, like playing bridge (which he says he plays around 12 hours per week) and gives a lot away to charities. With a frugal mindset, it’s easy to see how Warren has been able to hold onto his wealth.
When you look at Warren’s history in this way, there are lots of things we can learn from him and apply in our lives. Whether it’s focusing on how anybody can make it big if you put your mind to it or how to live in a capitalist world, Buffett is an inspiration to many.