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Talk about a breakfast of champions.
Although Warren Buffett is worth $106 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he’s famously frugal about just about anything in life — including his morning meal, which costs him less than $4 a day.
In the HBO documentary Becoming Warren Buffett, the 92-year-old revealed that for the past nearly six decades he has stopped by McDonald’s on the five-minute ride to the office every morning to enjoy one of the chain’s three signature menu offerings: sausage with eggs, cheese and ham. Crunchy with eggs and cheese or two sausages.
“I say to my wife, as I shave in the morning, I say: Either $2.61, or $2.95, or $3.17.” And she puts this amount in the little cup next to me here [in the car]he said in front of the camera. “When I’m not feeling so buoyant, I might go for $2.61, which is two sausages, then put them together and pour myself into a cola cup. $3.17 is a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit, but the market is down this morning, so I’m going by $3.17 and I go with $2.95.”
Not only does Warren pick the same few items each day based on the stock market, but he makes sure to pay for them with exact change – perhaps another habit we should start adopting as we try to be as successful as him.
Warren’s conservative nature is also apparent in his choice of living arrangements. In fact, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway still lives in the five-bedroom house in Omaha, Nebraska, which he bought back in 1958 for $31,500. That works out to about $329,505 on the market today—still well below the average cost of a billionaire’s home anywhere in the world.
According to CNBC, the 6,570-square-foot home he lives in with his wife, Astrid Menkes, is worth about $1.2 million. Regardless of the price, the CEO thinks the 1921 stucco body does the job.
“I’m happy there. I’d move if I thought I’d be happier somewhere else,” he told the BBC’s Evan Davis during an appearance on The World’s Greatest Moneymaker in 2009. m cool in the summer, it’s right for me. I couldn’t imagine owning a better home. “
Don’t expect him to change his mind about his abode any time soon, no matter how wealthy he is. In fact, in 2010, Warren wrote a letter to his shareholders that listed his three most important investments in life: two wedding rings and his house.
And there’s more to his frugality: Despite owning roughly 5.5% of Apple (reportedly Berkshire Hathaway’s third-largest!), Warren traded his $20 Samsung SCH-U320 foldable phone for an iPhone just three years ago, in 2020.
“My foldable phone is completely gone,” he told CNBC’s Becky Quick during an appearance on Sqawk Box at the time. He also revealed that he uses his iPhone 11 (at that time, the latest model available) for phone calls only.
Warren clearly knows what he’s doing: He’s currently the third richest person on the planet.
