Warren Buffett

Long before the world called him the “Oracle” or “Sage” of Omaha, Warren Edward Buffett was a boy with a paper route, a head for numbers, and a habit of turning small chances into working businesses. Born on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska, he was the only son of Howard Buffett, a businessman and U.S. congressman, and Leila Buffett. His childhood was split between Omaha and Washington, D.C., after his father was elected to Congress in 1942. By the time he graduated from what was then Woodrow Wilson High School in 1947, his yearbook already had him pegged: “likes math; a future stockbroker.”

Buffett’s education in money began early and practically. At seven, he borrowed One Thousand Ways to Make $1000 from the Omaha public library. Soon he was selling chewing gum, Coca-Cola, and weekly magazines door to door, working in his grandfather’s grocery store, delivering newspapers, selling golf balls and stamps, and detailing cars. At 11, he bought shares of Cities Service Preferred for himself and his sister Doris. At 14, he used savings to buy a 40-acre farm worked by a tenant farmer. As a high school sophomore, he and a friend bought a used pinball machine for $25 and placed it in a barber shop; within months, they had several machines in three Omaha barber shops, later selling the business for $1,200.

His formal training sharpened what experience had already started. Buffett entered the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1947, then transferred to the University of Nebraska, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a major in Investment Management in 1951. After being rejected by Harvard Business School, he enrolled at Columbia Business School after learning that Benjamin Graham taught there. Graham’s ideas about value investing, looking at stocks as businesses, using market fluctuations to one’s advantage, and seeking a margin of safety, shaped Buffett’s approach for the rest of his career. He later attended the New York Institute of Finance to deepen his economics background.

Buffett worked at his father’s firm, Buffett-Falk & Co., from 1951 to 1954, then at Graham-Newman Corp. as a securities analyst from 1954 to 1956. He created Buffett Partnership Ltd. in 1956, and his investment firm eventually acquired textile manufacturer Berkshire Hathaway, whose name became attached to a diversified holding company. Buffett became Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman and majority shareholder in 1970. In 1978, his long-time business associate Charlie Munger joined as vice-chairman. From 1970 to 2026, Buffett presided as chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway, one of America’s foremost holding companies and a leading corporate conglomerate.

Buffett’s public image has always mixed huge financial success with plain habits and a reputation for frugality. According to Forbes, as of January 2026, his estimated net worth was US$148.9 billion, making him the ninth-richest person in the world. Yet he also pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily through the Gates Foundation. In 2010, he founded The Giving Pledge with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, inviting billionaires to give away at least half their fortunes. At Berkshire Hathaway’s investor conference on May 3, 2025, he requested that the board appoint Greg Abel to succeed him as chief executive officer by the end of the year, while Buffett remained chairman.

Buffett’s words still resonate because they sound like the same mind that studied stock tables as a child and built Berkshire through patience, discipline, and restraint. He spoke often in direct, memorable terms about money, character, judgment, and trust. One line captures that practical moral sense: “Honesty is a very expensive gift; don’t expect it from cheap people.” In Buffett’s case, the appeal is not just wealth or rank, but the clarity of a person who spent a lifetime reducing complicated choices to simple principles and then trying to live by them.