Introduction
Businessman and investor Warren Buffett was born on August 30, 1930, in Omaha,
Nebraska. He is widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th century. Buffett
started investment at the age of eleven and progressed to small business at thirteen. Buffett
later started the firm Buffett Partnership in Omaha, with huge success. He is the chairman,
CEO and largest shareholder ofBerkshire Hathaway and consistently ranked among theten
world richest people. In 2008, he ranked as the world’s wealthiest person. In 2006, Buffett
announced that he would give his entire fortune away to charity (est. $62 billion.), the
largest act of charitable giving in United States history.
On April 11 2012, he was diagnosed withprostate cancerfor which he
successfullycompletedtreatment in September 2012.
Summary of the biography
Early life
Buffett’s father Howard worked as stockbroker and served as U.S. Congressman. His
mother, Leila Stahl Buffett, was a homemaker. Buffett was the second of three children
and the only boy.
Buffett demonstrated a knack for financial and business matters early on in his childhood.
Friends and acquaintances complimentedyoung Buffetfor his ability at mathematical
prodigy. He was able to add large columns of numbers in his head; a talent he still
occasionally shows off to friends and business associates.
Buffett began his education at Rose Hill Elementary School in Omaha. In 1942, his father
was elected to the first of four terms in theUnited States Congress. Warren Buffet and
family moved to Washington, D.C., where he finished elementary school, attended Alice
Deal Junior High School, and graduated fromWoodrow Wilson High Schoolin 1947. His
senior yearbook picture reads: “likes math; a future stockbroker”
Childhood memoirs
Even as a child, Buffett displayed an interest in making and saving money. He went door
to door selling chewing gum,Coca Cola or weekly magazines. For a while, he worked in
his grandfather’s grocery store. While still in high school he was successful inmaking
moneyby delivering newspapers, selling golf balls, stamps, and detailing cars, among other
means. Filing his first income tax returnin 1944, Buffett took a $35 deduction for the use
of his bicycle and watch on his paper route.In 1945, in his sophomore year of high school,
Buffett and a friend spent $25 to purchase a usedpinballmachine, which they placed in the
localbarber shop. Within months, they owned several machines in different barber shops.
Early Investment germs
Warren often visited his father’s stockbrokerage shop as a child, and chalked in the stock
prices on the blackboard in the office. On a trip to New York City at the age of ten, he
