Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren Buffett was a philanthropist before he was a billionaire. Even before the famed investor was worth current estimates of $147 billion, the Oracle of Omaha planned to give away any money he accrued.
Buffett said that in his 20s, when he met and later married his late wife, Susie, the pair never had grand plans to be wealthy and would donate whatever amounts they could afford. Speaking to CNBC, the 95-year-old said: “Susie and I didn’t really have any money, but we did know that we intended to live fine and we intended to have a family. But we did not have aspirations of having six houses, or a 500-foot yacht, or anything of that sort.”
“Even then, we talked about what we would do philanthropically.”
The premise of Buffett and his wife’s endeavors was that the investor believed he would accrue interest faster than society in general, and Susie would “give it away better than 99.9% of the people that were giving it away.”
Buffett said his first wife, who died in 2004 following a stroke, liked to become personally involved when gifting, whereas Buffett preferred a “wholesale approach.” “We had a plan, but we didn’t have any money,” Buffett recalls.
Following Susie’s death, Buffett has held true to their plans. He formed the Giving Pledge in 2010 alongside Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and his ex-wife, philanthropist and businesswoman Melinda French Gates. The Giving Pledge aims to encourage high-net-worth individuals to engage in philanthropy earlier and to publicly pledge to use their wealth for the good of society.
For nearly two decades, Buffett had channeled his donations via the Gates Foundation—some $48 billion across 19 years. Earlier this week, Berkshire Hathaway confirmed Buffett was donating a total of 12 million Class B Berkshire shares to charitable organizations, worth just under $6 billion—but none of it went to the Gates Foundation.
Many believe the growing distance between Gates and Buffett stems from the tech entrepreneur’s ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Buffett told CNBC that he had watched Gates’s Congressional testimony earlier this year, calling the matter “distasteful.” While Buffett said that while “I don’t know whether I’ve done dumber things,” he had made mistakes himself, explaining he had hired people and then found out later “one way or another, they weren’t what I thought they were.”
Buffett’s children are wealth custodians
Instead of continuing his work with Gates, Buffett has begun dispersing his wealth entirely through his children. This year, all of the shares designated for foundations are associated with, or run by, his family. The remainder of his $140 billion worth of Berkshire shares will be disbursed by 2034 to the organizations run by his family, he announced Tuesday.
This transition was perhaps inevitable as his children aged, Buffett said, who added that his children are capable of achieving the aims set out by their parents. Buffett has three children, Howard, Peter and Susan.
“I tell the three children that it is theirs and it’s their responsibility to get it done well,” Buffett said. “You may find this hard to believe, but it’s true, I never looked at their Form 990s, which they file. I’m not judging each action as it takes place because you take actions where you think there’s only a 10% or 20% probability of success. It’s not like investment.”
Form 990 is an IRS tax form for nonprofits.
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