“Sound investing can make you very wealthy if you’re not in too big a hurry.”
— Warren Buffett
November 24, 2025 — As Thanksgiving approaches, I’m grateful and surprised by my luck in being alive at 95. When I was young, this outcome did not look like a good bet. Early on, I nearly died.
It was 1938, and Omaha hospitals were then thought of by its citizens as either Catholic or Protestant, a classification that seemed natural at the time.
Our family doctor, Harley Hotz, was a friendly Catholic who made house calls toting a black bag. Dr. Hotz called me Skipper and never charged much for his visits. When I experienced a bad bellyache, Dr. Hotz came by and, after probing a bit, told me I would be okay in the morning.
He then went home, had dinner, and played a little bridge. He couldn’t get my somewhat peculiar symptoms out of his mind, however, so later that night he dispatched me to St. Catherine’s Hospital for an emergency appendectomy. During the next three weeks, I felt like I was in a nunnery, and began enjoying my new “podium.” I liked to talk—yes, even then—and the nuns embraced me.
To top things off, Miss Madsen, my third-grade teacher, told my 30 classmates to each write me a letter. I probably threw away the letters from the boys but read and reread those from the girls; hospitalization had its rewards.
The highlight of my recovery—which actually was dicey for much of the first week—was a gift from my wonderful Aunt Edie. She brought me a very professional-looking fingerprinting set, and I promptly fingerprinted all of my attending nuns.
My theory was that someday a nun would go bad, and the FBI would find that they had neglected to fingerprint nuns. The FBI and its director, J. Edgar Hoover, were revered by Americans in the 1930s, and I envisioned Mr. Hoover himself coming to Omaha to inspect my invaluable collection. I further fantasized that J. Edgar and I would quickly identify and apprehend the wayward nun. National fame seemed certain.
Some years later it became clear that I should have fingerprinted J. Edgar, as he became disgraced for misusing his post.
Well, that was Omaha in the 1930s, when a sled, a bicycle, a baseball glove, and an electric train were coveted by me and my friends.
Charlie Munger, my best pal for 64 years, lived a block away from the house I have owned and occupied since 1958. [Munger was Berkshire Hathaway’s vice-chairman from 1978 until his death in 2023.] Early on, I missed befriending Charlie by a whisker. Charlie, six and two-thirds years older than me, worked in the summer of 1940 at my grandfather’s grocery store, earning $2 for a 10-hour day. (Thrift runs deep in Buffett blood.) The following year I did similar work at the store, but I never met Charlie until 1959, when he was 35 and I was 28.
After serving in World War II, Charlie graduated from Harvard Law and then moved permanently to California. Charlie, however, forever talked of his early years in Omaha as formative. For more than 60 years, Charlie had a huge impact on me and could not have been a better teacher and protective “big brother.” We had differences but never had an argument. “I told you so” was not in his vocabulary.
I lived a few teenage years in Washington, D.C., when my dad was in Congress, and in 1954 I took what I thought would be a permanent job in Manhattan. New York had unique assets—and still does—and I made many lifelong friends. Nevertheless, in 1956, after only a year and a half, I returned to Omaha, never to wander again.
Two years later, I bought my first and only home, about two miles from where I grew up (loosely defined), less than two blocks from my in-laws, about six blocks from the Buffett grocery store, and a six- or seven-minute drive from the office building where I have worked for 64 years.
Subsequently, my three children, as well as several grandchildren, were raised in Omaha. My children always attended public schools, graduating from the same high school that educated my dad (class of 1921) and my first wife, Susie (class of 1950), as well as Charlie.
Our country has many great companies, great schools, and great medical facilities, and each definitely has its own special advantages, along with talented people. But I feel very lucky to have had the good fortune to make many lifelong friends, to meet both of my wives, to receive a great start in education at public schools, to meet many interesting and friendly adult Omahans when I was very young, and to make a wide variety of friends in the Nebraska National Guard. In short, Nebraska has been home.
Looking back, I feel that both Berkshire Hathaway and I did better because of our base in Omaha than if I had resided anywhere else. The center of the United States was a very good place to be born, to raise a family, and to build a business. Through dumb luck, I drew a ridiculously long straw at birth.
Now let’s move on to my advanced age. My genes haven’t been particularly helpful—the family’s all-time record for longevity (admittedly family records get fuzzy as you work backward) was 92 until I came along. But I have had wise, friendly, and dedicated Omaha doctors, starting with Harley Hotz and continuing to this day. At least three times, my life has been saved, each with doctors based within a few miles from my home. (I have given up fingerprinting nurses, however. You can get away with many eccentricities at 95, but there are limits.)
Those who reach old age need a huge dose of good luck, daily escaping banana peels, natural disasters, drunk or distracted drivers, lightning strikes, you name it.
But Lady Luck is fickle and—no other term fits—wildly unfair. In many cases, our leaders and the rich have received far more than their share of luck—which, too often, the recipients prefer not to acknowledge. Dynastic inheritors have achieved lifetime financial independence the moment they emerged from the womb, while others have arrived facing a hellhole during their early lives or, worse, disabling physical or mental infirmities that rob them of what I have taken for granted. In many heavily populated parts of the world, I would likely have had a miserable life and my sisters would have had an even worse one.
Thank you, Lady Luck.
At my age, however, it’s Father Time that seems most interested in me. And he is undefeated; for him, everyone ends up on his scorecard as “wins.” When balance, sight, hearing, and memory are all on a persistently downward slope, you know Father Time is in the neighborhood.
To my surprise, I generally feel good. Though I move slowly and read with increasing difficulty, I am at the office five days a week, where I work with wonderful people. Occasionally, I get a useful idea or am approached with an offer we might not otherwise have received. Because of Berkshire’s size and because of market levels, ideas are few—but not zero.
My children are all above normal retirement age, having reached 72, 70, and 67. It would be a mistake to wager that all three—now at their peak in many respects—will enjoy my exceptional luck in delayed aging. To improve the probability that they will dispose of what will essentially be my entire estate before alternate trustees replace them, I need to step up the pace of lifetime gifts to their three foundations. My children are now at their prime in respect to experience and wisdom but have yet to enter old age. That “honeymoon” period will not last forever.
All three children now have the maturity, brains, energy, and instincts to disburse a large fortune. [Buffett’s is currently worth $150 billion, according to Forbes.] They will also have the advantage of being above ground when I am long gone and, if necessary, can adopt policies both anticipatory and reactive to federal tax policies or other developments affecting philanthropy. They may well need to adapt to a significantly changing world around them. Ruling from the grave does not have a great record, and I have never had an urge to do so.
Fortunately, all three children received a dominant dosage of their genes from their mother. As the decades have passed, I have also become a better model for their thinking and behavior. I will never, however, achieve parity with their mother. [Buffett’s first wife, Susan, died in 2004 at the age of 72.]
I have assured my children that they do not need to perform miracles nor fear failures or disappointments. These are inevitable, and I have made my share. They simply need to improve somewhat upon what generally is achieved by government activities and/or private philanthropy, recognizing these other methods of redistribution of wealth have shortcomings as well.
Early on, I contemplated various grand philanthropic plans. Though I was stubborn, these did not prove feasible. During my many years, I’ve also watched ill-conceived wealth transfers by political hacks, dynastic choices, and inept or quirky philanthropists.
If my children simply do a decent job, they can be certain that their mother and I would be pleased. Their instincts are good, and they each have had years of practice, with very small sums initially that have been irregularly increased to more than $500 million annually.
All three like working long hours to help others, each in their own way.
One perhaps self-serving observation: I’m happy to say I feel better about the second half of my life than the first. My advice: Don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes—learn at least a little from them and move on. It is never too late to improve. Get the right heroes and copy them.
Remember Alfred Nobel, later of Nobel Prize fame, who—reportedly—read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behavior.
Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up: Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.
Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity, or great power in government. When you help someone in any one of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat the Golden Rule as a guide to behavior.
I write this as one who has been thoughtless countless times and made many mistakes but also became very lucky in learning from some wonderful friends how to behave better (still a long way from perfect, however). Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the chairman.
I wish all who read this a very happy Thanksgiving. Remember to thank America for maximizing your opportunities. But it is—inevitably—capricious and sometimes venal in distributing its rewards. Choose your heroes very carefully and then emulate them. You will never be perfect, but you can always be better.
Warren Buffett
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway & Grey Swan Investment Fraternity
[SPAD]
P.S. from Addison: We have two observations concurrent with Buffet stepping down.
The “Buffet Indicator” – a financial metric that compares the total market capitalization of a country’s publicly traded stocks to its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – is at the highest it’s ever been during Buffet’s career.
A high reading suggests stocks may be overpriced relative to the economy, while a low reading can indicate the market is undervalued. (Source:https://buffettindicator.net)
As a consequence, Berkshire Hathaway’s cash holdings are the highest in Warren Buffett’s career at approximately $381.7 billion, as of late 2025. This massive cash pile represents a record high for the company, with the bulk of the money parked in short-term Treasury bills.
Individual investors with a long time horizon will want to pay attention, especially if you’re concerned, as we are, that AI stocks and circular investing at the top of the S&P 500 have distorted the investment picture for most investors.
P.P.S. While this is a holiday-shortened trading week, we’ve arranged for a unique presentation with Tim Sykes on Thursday @ 2pm EST/11am PST during Grey Swan Live! Mr. Sykes will unveil a novel trading strategy we believe you may be interested in.
Tim Sykes is one of the top traders in the game today. We’ve been working with him in one capacity or another for over a decade.
Spoiler alert: Tim uses a proprietary indicator to identify stocks on Fridays that are poised to spike higher when markets reopen after a given weekend. As you’ll see, Tim’s unique strategy is well-suited for consideration during the holiday season.
