If you’re spending Christmas with a billionaire, you might expect an extravagant gift or two underneath the tree, and despite Warren Buffett’s reputation for living a frugal lifestyle, his family did grow accustomed to being gifted piles of cash for the holidays.
However, when the Oracle of Omaha found out how his family were behaving after receiving their gifts, he changed tack—ensuring that his wealth wasn’t just a present for Christmas, it was for life.
Buffett’s former daughter-in-law Mary Buffett—who was married to the Berkshire Hathaway CEO’s son Peter—recounted that she was initially gifted $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills.
“As soon as we got home, we’d spend it, whoo!” Mary added in an interview with ThinkAdvisor in 2019.
However, if there’s one thing to know about the 94-year-old worth $147 billion, it’s to invest in the long game instead of splashing cash in the short term.
“Then, one Christmas, there was an envelope with a letter from him. Instead of cash, he’d given us $10,000 worth of shares in a company he’d recently bought, a trust Coca-Cola had.
“He said to either cash them in or keep them. I thought: ‘Well, [the stock] is worth more than $10,000.’ So I kept it, and it kept going up,” Mary added.
From that year on, Buffett continued to gift his family stock, including shares in the bank Wells Fargo.
Mary added that she would continue to buy shares in whatever company her former father-in-law had gifted her because she “knew it was going to go up.”
But what do you gift the man who can buy virtually whatever he wants and yet sticks with the products he knows and likes?
Despite his wealth, Buffett, for example, is known to drive a 10-year-old Cadillac with hail damage and still lives in the same home he bought in the late 1950s.
“The first year we were married, I realized: ‘Warren is very rich. Therefore, he doesn’t want anything,’” Mary, who was married to Buffett’s son for over a decade, added. “I didn’t know what to get him, so I put together our music company’s balance sheet to show him that we were making money.”
Mary, an author and personal finance expert herself, said she never presented the company’s finances to Buffett because she wanted his investment.
Instead: “I just wanted to show him: ‘Look, we’re doing good.’”
Mary added that, in spending more time with Buffett, she understood his thinking and that an insight into her business’s finances would be of interest to him.
Frugal and generous
Buffett has earned himself something of a reputation for his frugal nature.
That being said, Buffett’s loved ones have been quick to defend him from implications that he might not be generous with his wealth.
Speaking to Business Insider in 2017, Buffett’s daughter, Susie, said that just because her father isn’t leaving his vast sums to her directly, it doesn’t mean he is not a kind and giving parent.
“I actually agree with his philosophy of not dumping a bunch of money on your kids. And, by the way, my dad gets a bad rap for that,” she said. “He has been much more generous than people are aware. I feel extremely grateful to have the parents I had and for what they’ve given us.
“But certainly, he’s not going to leave us $50 billion and shouldn’t. It would be crazy to do anything like that.”
Indeed, even at Christmas, it seems the Oracle of Omaha’s family is never far from discussing sensible money management.
As Mary put it, when the family were together at Buffett’s Laguna Beach property for the festive season, “all the titans of industry would be there.”
She added: “We’d have lunches and dinners, and they’d all talk about companies. Investing was the only thing Warren ever talked about.”
