Monday, May 05, 2025

Warren Buffett’s enormous charitable gifts of the Oracle of Omaha

Recommendable! This man is quite a character!

"... He has given much of his vast fortune to charity and plans to unload the most of the rest during his lifetime or upon his death. Buffett also largely lives a modest lifestyle by billionaire standards; he still resides in the spacious house he bought six decades ago. ...

With fellow philanthropists Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, Buffett created The Giving Pledge, through which billionaires commit to giving at least half their fortunes to charity. Buffett is going way beyond that: “More than 99% of my wealth will go to philanthropy during my lifetime or at death,” he pledged.

Rather than establish his own foundation, he has poured his charitable money into five foundations run by others, especially the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – for which he served as a trustee until 2021. Upon stepping down, Buffett observed that he has similarly exited all the corporate boards to which he used to belong because his “physical participation is in no way needed.”

Buffett says he has given very little money to his three children, Howard Graham Buffett, Peter Buffett and Susan Alice Buffett, aside from hundreds of millions of dollars for the foundations they each run.

As of September 2024, he had gradually given the five foundations he has funded Berkshire Hathaway shares worth a cumulative total of $55 billion. “Society has a use for my money; I don’t,” he quipped in 2021.

In 2024, he announced plans to give the foundations his children run what could amount to around $150 billion more upon his death. He also said they should give this money away within a decade. ..."

How Warren Buffett’s enormous charitable gifts reflect the ‘inner scorecard’ that has guided him up to the billionaire’s planned retirement


Warren Buffett still lives in the same house in Omaha, Neb., that he bought for $31,500 in 1958, about $350,000 in today’s dollars. 


No comments: