Buffett’s Buffets

I would venture to guess the majority, if not all of you know who Warren Buffett is. If not, maybe you have heard of Geico, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, Brooks Sports, or Duracell.  Those aforementioned companies are subsidiaries of Berkshire Hathaway, whose CEO and majority shareholder is, Warren Buffett (See? It all came full circle).

Monday night HBO aired a documentary on Buffett called “Becoming Warren Buffett”.  In the documentary, Buffett credits his success to value investing logically and leaving emotion on the side lines.  Ironically Buffett bought Berkshire Hathaway in a fit of anger after the CEO tried to lowball him by an 1/8 of a cent.  The documentary as a whole is quite interesting if you have the opportunity to catch it but a few facts really caught my attention.

Despite being the second richest man in the world Buffett still lives in Nebraska, in the five-bedroom home he purchased in 1958 for $31,500.  His five-minute commute, to his equally uninspiring office is done in a 2014 Cadillac XTS.  For breakfast, each morning he stops at McDonalds, never spending more than $3.17.  "When I'm not feeling quite so prosperous, I might go with the $2.61, which is two sausage patties, and then I put them together and pour myself a Coke," he tells director Peter Kunhardt in the documentary. "$3.17 is a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, but the market's down this morning, so I'll pass up the $3.17 and go with the $2.95."

Really what stands out the most is that despite being the second richest man in the world, worth almost $74 billion, Buffett is expected to give the majority of his wealth to charity having said “In my entire lifetime everything that I spend will be quite a bit less than 1% of everything I make,” “The other 99%-plus will go to others because it has no utility to me, so it’s silly for me to not transfer that utility to people who can use it. It’s doing me no good.”  This lifestyle and mentality are really what make Mr. Buffett such an interesting character in the face of his historic success. Despite his nonchalant demeanor however, Mr. Buffet seems to still be as involved in his business and tenacious as ever. Bloomberg reports he has bought roughly $12 Billion worth of stock since the election. That doesn’t sound like a move by a person not interested in making money any more.

Buffet has been interesting to follow his whole career and is no less amazing to watch now than in his youth. I guess it’s good HBO got the special out while Mr. Buffett is still around to talk to, but it would seem the tale of Warren Buffett and the seemingly endless lessons he has for investors are far from over.