Warren Buffet is an American investor, business tycoon, philanthropist, and the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He was investing in the stock market as early as the age of 11, and by age 16 had acquired more than $53,000 from various business ventures and investments. After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 3 years, Buffet was rejected by Harvard. Buffet has always lived a very modest lifestyle and doesn't dress flashy or buy expensive items like cars. He also has lived in the same house since 1958. An estimated 94% of his Net Worth was acquired after he turned 60.
Warren Buffett demonstrated keen business abilities at a young age. He formed Buffett Partnership Ltd. in 1956, and by 1965 he had assumed control of Berkshire Hathaway. Overseeing the growth of a conglomerate with holdings in the media, insurance, energy and food and beverage industries, Buffett became one of the world's richest men and a celebrated philanthropist.
Learn About the Life and Business of Billionaire Warren Buffett
Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett's father, Howard, worked as a stockbroker and served as a U.S. congressman. His mother, Leila Stahl Buffett, was a homemaker. Buffett was the second of three children and the only boy. He demonstrated a knack for financial and business matters early in his childhood: Friends and acquaintances have said the young boy was a mathematical prodigy who could add large columns of numbers in his head, a talent he occasionally demonstrated in his later years.
Buffett displayed an interest in business and investing at a young age. He was inspired by a book he borrowed from the Omaha public library at age seven, One Thousand Ways to Make $1000. Much of Buffett's early childhood years were enlivened with entrepreneurial ventures.
At only six years old, Buffett purchased six-packs of Coca-Cola from his grandfather's grocery store for twenty-five cents and resold each of the bottles for a nickel, pocketing a five-cent profit. While other children his age were playing hopscotch and jacks, Warren was making money. Five years later, Buffett took his first step into the world of high finance.
Buffett's interest in the stock market and investing dated to schoolboy days he spent in the customers' lounge of a regional stock brokerage near his father's own brokerage office. On a trip to New York City at age ten, he made a point to visit the New York Stock Exchange. At eleven years old, he purchased three shares of Cities Service Preferred at $38 per share for both himself and his older sister, Doris. Shortly after buying the stock, it fell to just over $27 per share. A frightened but resilient Warren held his shares until they rebounded to $40. He promptly sold them—a mistake he would soon come to regret. Cities Service shot up to $200. The experience taught him one of the basic lessons of investing: Patience is a virtue.
At 15, Warren made more than $175 monthly delivering Washington Post newspapers. While still in high school, he made money delivering newspapers, selling golf balls and stamps, and detailing cars, among other means. In high school, he invested in a business owned by his father and bought a 40-acre farm worked by a tenant farmer. He bought the land when he was 14 years old with $1,200 of his savings. By the time he finished college, Buffett had accumulated $9,800 in savings (about $105,000 today).
When Buffett was 17, he told a friend about an idea with massive potential. He bought an old pinball machine for $25, his friend helped him fix it up, he planted it in a barbershop dealing to share half the profits with the shop owner. He made the deal and claimed to be part of a fake coin-operated machine company. The deal worked out beautifully and the machine-made 4 dollars on its first day. After a week Warren made back his 25 dollars and reinvested in another machine. He repeated the cycle until he had seven or eight machines. “Mr. Wilson’s machines” making him money around town. Within months, they owned several machines in three different barber shops across Omaha. They sold the business later in the year for $1,200 to a war veteran.