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Net Worth

$66.5 Billion
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
Age
83
Source of Wealth
Berkshire Hathaway, Self Made
Residence
Omaha, NE
Citizenship
United States
Marital Status
Widowed, Remarried
Children
3
Education
Master of Science, Columbia University; Bachelor of Arts / Science,
University of Nebraska Lincoln

Now in his ninth decade, Buffett is still doing huge deals. Last year he
teamed up with 3G Capital to pick up iconic ketchup maker H.J. Heinz for $23.2
billion, invested nearly $4 billion in ExxonMobil and a Berkshire Hathaway
subsidiary bought Nevada's NV Energy for $5.6 billion. All of this helped boost his
fortune by $4.7 billion despite his gift of $2 billion in Berkshire stock to the Gates
Foundation in July, bringing his lifetime giving to $20 billion. Secret to his
success? In his investment letter in 2014, he told Berkshire Hathaway shareholders
his best investment wasn't a stock or business, it was buying Benjamin Graham's
book "The Intelligent Investor" in 1949. The book's simple, logically sound
approach changed his financial life, he said. As for his advice to investors today,
the Oracle of Omaha said in February, as the S&P 500 again touched record levels,
to steer clear of market euphoria and focus on the potential for profits over time
Warren Buffett's Education
In 1947, a seventeen year old Warren Buffett graduated from High School. It
was never his intention to go to college; he had already made $5,000 delivering
newspapers (this is equal to $42,610.81 in 2000). His father had other plans, and
urged his son to attend the Wharton Business School at the University of
Pennsylvania. Buffett stayed two years, complaining that he knew more than his
professors. When Howard was defeated in the 1948 Congressional race, Warren
returned home to Omaha and transferred to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Working full-time, he managed to graduate in only three years.
Warren Buffett approached graduate studies with the same resistance he
displayed a few years earlier. He was finally persuaded to apply to Harvard
Business School, which, in the worst admission decision in history, rejected him as
"too young". Slighted, Warren applied to Columbia where famed investors Ben
Graham and David Dodd taught - an experience that would forever change his life.
Ben Graham - Buffett's Mentor
Ben Graham had become well known during the 1920's. At a time when the
rest of the world was approaching the investment arena as a giant game of roulette,
he searched for stocks that were so inexpensive they were almost completely
devoid of risk . One of his best known calls was the Northern Pipe Line, an oil
transportation company managed by the Rockefellers. The stock was trading at $65
a share, but after studying the balance sheet , Graham realized that the company
had bond holdings worth $95 for every share. The value investor tried to convince
management to sell the portfolio , but they refused. Shortly thereafter, he waged a
proxy war and secured a spot on the Board of Directors . The company sold its
bonds and paid a dividend in the amount of $70 per share.
When he was 40 years old, Ben Graham published Security Analysis, one of
the greatest works ever penned on the stock market. At the time, it was risky;
investing in equities had become a joke (the Dow Jones had fallen from 381.17 to
41.22 over the course of three to four short years following the crash of 1929). It
was around this time that Graham came up with the principle of "intrinsic"
business value - a measure of a business's true worth that was completely and
totally independent of the stock price. Using intrinsic value, investors could decide
what a company was worth and make investment decisions accordingly. His
subsequent book, The Intelligent Investor, which Warren celebrates as "the greatest
book on investing ever written", introduced the world to Mr. Market - the best
investment analogy in history.
Through his simple yet profound investment principles, Ben Graham
became an idyllic figure to the twenty-one year old Warren Buffett. Reading an old
edition of Who's Who, Warren discovered his mentor was the Chairman of a small,
unknown insurance company named GEICO. He hopped a train to Washington
D.C. one Saturday morning to find the headquarters. When he got there, the doors
were locked. Not to be stopped, Buffett relentlessly pounded on the door until a
janitor came to open it for him. He asked if there was anyone in the building. As
luck (or fate) would have it, there was. It turns out that there was a man still
working on the sixth floor. Warren was escorted up to meet him and immediately
began asking him questions about the company and its business practices; a
conversation that stretched on for four hours. The man was none other than
Lorimer Davidson, the Financial Vice President. The experience would be
something that stayed with Buffett for the rest of his life. He eventually acquired
the entire GEICO company through his corporation, Berkshire Hathaway.

Warren Buffett's10 Ways to Get Rich
With an estimated fortune of $62 billion, Warren Buffett is the richest man in the
entire world. In 1962, when he began buying stock in Berkshire Hathaway, a share
cost $7.50. Today, Warren Buffett, 78, is Berkshire's chairman and CEO, and one
share of the company's class A stock worth close to $119,000. He credits his
astonishing success to several key strategies, which he has shared with writer Alice
Schroeder. She spend hundreds of hours interviewing the Sage of Omaha for the
new authorized biography The Snowball. Here are some of Warren Buffett's
money-making secrets -- and how they could work for you.

1. Reinvest Your Profits: When you first make money in the stock market, you
may be tempted to spend it. Don't. Instead, reinvest the profits. Warren Buffett
learned this early on. In high school, he and a pal bought a pinball machine to put
in a barbershop. With the money they earned, they bought more machines until
they had eight in different shops. When the friends sold the venture, Warren
Buffett used the proceeds to buy stocks and to start another small business. By age
26, he'd amassed $174,000 -- or $1.4 million in today's money. Even a small sum
can turn into great wealth.

2. Be Willing To Be Different: Don't base your decisions upon what everyone is
saying or doing. When Warren Buffett began managing money in 1956 with
$100,000 cobbled together from a handful of investors, he was dubbed an oddball.
He worked in Omaha, not Wall Street, and he refused to tell his parents where he
was putting their money. People predicted that he'd fail, but when he closed his
partnership 14 years later, it was worth more than $100 million. Instead of
following the crowd, he looked for undervalued investments and ended up vastly
beating the market average every single year. To Warren Buffett, the average is
just that -- what everybody else is doing. to be above average, you need to measure
yourself by what he calls the Inner Scorecard, judging yourself by your own
standards and not the world's.

3. Never Suck Your Thumb: Gather in advance any information you need to
make a decision, and ask a friend or relative to make sure that you stick to a
deadline. Warren Buffett prides himself on swiftly making up his mind and acting
on it. He calls any unnecessary sitting and thinking "thumb sucking." When people
offer him a business or an investment, he says, "I won't talk unless they bring me a
price." He gives them an answer on the spot.

4. Spell Out The Deal Before You Start: Your bargaining leverage is always
greatest before you begin a job -- that's when you have something to offer that the
other party wants. Warren Buffett learned this lesson the hard way as a kid, when
his grandfather Ernest hired him and a friend to dig out the family grocery store
after a blizzard. The boys spent five hours shoveling until they could barely
straighten their frozen hands. Afterward, his grandfather gave the pair less than 90
cents to split. Warren Buffett was horrified that he performed such backbreaking
work only to earn pennies an hour. Always nail down the specifics of a deal in
advance -- even with your friends and relatives.





5. Watch Small Expenses: Warren Buffett invests in businesses run by managers
who obsess over the tiniest costs. He one acquired a company whose owner
counted the sheets in rolls of 500-sheet toilet paper to see if he was being cheated
(he was). He also admired a friend who painted only on the side of his office
building that faced the road. Exercising vigilance over every expense can make
your profits -- and your paycheck -- go much further.
6. Limit What You Borrow: Living on credit cards and loans won't make you
rich. Warren Buffett has never borrowed a significant amount -- not to invest, not
for a mortgage. He has gotten many heart-rending letters from people who thought
their borrowing was manageable but became overwhelmed by debt. His advice:
Negotiate with creditors to pay what you can. Then, when you're debt-free, work
on saving some money that you can use to invest.

7. Be Persistent: With tenacity and ingenuity, you can win against a more
established competitor. Warren Buffett acquired the Nebraska Furniture Mart in
1983 because he liked the way its founder, Rose Blumkin, did business. A Russian
immigrant, she built the mart from a pawnshop into the largest furniture store in
North America. Her strategy was to undersell the big shots, and she was a
merciless negotiator. To Warren Buffett, Rose embodied the unwavering courage
that makes a winner out of an underdog.
8. Know When To Quit: Once, when Warren Buffett was a teen, he went to the
racetrack. He bet on a race and lost. To recoup his funds, he bet on another race.
He lost again, leaving him with close to nothing. He felt sick -- he had squandered
nearly a week's earnings. Warren Buffett never repeated that mistake. Know when
to walk away from a loss, and don't let anxiety fool you into trying again.

9. Assess The Risk: In 1995, the employer of Warren Buffett's son, Howie, was
accused by the FBI of price-fixing. Warren Buffett advised Howie to imagine the
worst-and-bast-case scenarios if he stayed with the company. His son quickly
realized that the risks of staying far outweighed any potential gains, and he quit the
next day. Asking yourself "and then what?" can help you see all of the possible
consequences when you're struggling to make a decision -- and can guide you to
the smartest choice.

10. Know What Success Really Means: Despite his wealth, Warren Buffett does
not measure success by dollars. In 2006, he pledged to give away almost his entire
fortune to charities, primarily the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He's
adamant about not funding monuments to himself -- no Warren Buffett buildings
or halls. "I know people who have a lot of money," he says, "and they get
testimonial dinners and hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that
nobody in the world loves them. When you get to my age, you'll measure your
success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you, actually do
love you. That's the ultimate test of how you've lived your life."

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