Category Archives: billionaires

The University of Michigan is set to receive a $110 million gift of shares of stock from a philanthropist and investor based out of Los Angeles California. This is the largest donation in the school’s history. It is set aside for a graduate student residence hall. This will be a strong selling point as the school continues to compete for the best students looking to earn advanced degrees, we learn from officials at the University on Thursday.

On Thursday afternoon, the Board of Regents approved the generous donation from Charles Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. If you don’t know, Charlie Munger is a billionaire investor in his own right, and he’s also Warren Buffett’s right-hand man. Munger is consulted on every major move that Berkshire Hathaway makes.

We also learn from university officials that the building is scheduled to open up in the fall of 2015. It’s main goal is to break down economic barriers and promote interaction at the University. Munger’s gift also includes $10 million worth of fellowships. They are to be offered to students of the university’s 19 colleges and schools in the Ann Arbor region. The fellows are to be among the 600 residents of the building set to reach eight stories high. It is going to be located centrally right on the campus.

In an interview with the Associated Press over the phone, Munger mentioned that he understands that such a large sum of money for a residence hall is probably not the highest priority of the majority of universities. They also mentioned that it’s not the normal route for philanthropy. But, the Michigan alumnus who is now 89 years old said it can help build on other ideas, which includes a large graduate student housing facility that he personally funded at Stanford University.

Munger also mentions that his main desire is to get graduate students working together on projects and exchanging ideas goes all the way back to his law school days at Harvard University. There were very little interactions between students of different fields. Munger is driven by the words of philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, who spoke of “the fatal unconnectedness of academic disciplines.”

“It’s a pernicious evil. Fatal – I don’t think that’s too strong,” Munger said, who was able to study math at Michigan during the 1940s. “Specialization causes a lot of bad thinking.”

The apartments in the Michigan residence hall will showcase several study rooms and individual bedrooms with a private bathroom, a common dining hall, a big kitchen shared by all and communal living areas. Visiting faculty will be able to use some of the rooms. There will be gathering spaces throughout the eight floors, a commissary and also a fitness center. The fellows will also have their own gathering room.

The building will cost $185 million in total, and the University tells us that the balance of the cost will be paid by lease revenue.

This building is the latest investment in a series of large investments made by the University. It is there to help students choose the University of Michigan over some of the other Ivy League offerings and other schools of more prestige. During last month, it was announced by the University that Helen Zell, the billionaire real estate tycoon Sam Zell’s wife, plans on giving $50 million to support the graduate writing program of the acclaimed University.

“It could be a huge tool for universities to transform the way they recruit and train graduate students,” said Gene Tempel in regards to Charlie Munger’s gift. He is the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy’s founding dean.

It is also mentioned that there have been larger gifts to other universities in the United States, but there hasn’t been such a large donation for the purpose that Munger’s money will go to. Michigan’s project stands out quite a bit, even though improving interdisciplinary studies is a major goal throughout academia.

“Using the graduate students as a tool to help break down the silos – that in itself is a very innovative approach,” said Tempel.

Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan mentions in a statement that the majority of universities do not have a communal approach in the education of graduates, but Munger is “passionate about improving graduate student housing.”

In 1978, Charles Munger became the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, an Omaha Nebraska Company. They currently own over 80 businesses.

Munger also tells us that the students are going to be responsible for connecting disciplines, and money or buildings will not have anything to do with it.

“Big goals with central planning have a lot of failure,” said Monger. “Modern graduate students are sensational people. You don’t have to drive them – all you have to do is enable them.”

There was a video recently posted online which shows some of the most powerful athletes in the world sitting right alongside two of the most powerful businessmen in the world. (See the video above.)

As I’m sure you know, Lebron James is one of the biggest superstars in basketball (and all sports for that matter) and he just posted a YouTube video of behind-the-scenes footage from a dinner that he went to in Las Vegas with the multibillionaires. In the video, the spectacular player with the Miami Heat is shown casually dining with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, two of the richest men in the world according to the Forbes 400 list.

The smalltalk at this table must of been out of this world.

The dinner experienced by these 3 gentlemen took place at the posh Bartolotta at the Wynn, we learned from the Bleacher Report.

During 2008, basketball star Chris Paul and Lebron James were training together before they went to Beijing to participate in the Summer Olympics. Lebron reportedly invited Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to see the team play.

“We just had dinner with a few friends of ours, you know,” Lebron tells us in the beginning of the video clip. “Two guys by the name of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. A lot of people call him William. Two of the powerful people in the world, you know.”

This isn’t even the first time that Warren Buffett and Lebron James have been out in public together, in all honesty. As a matter of fact, the 82-year-old Buffett has praised Lebron James on occasion because of his eye for finances. Yahoo Sports tells us that Warren Buffett says James is grounded and savvy.

Lebron James is number four on the Forbes list of highest-paid athletes during 2012. He’s currently behind Tiger Woods, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.

There was a bizarre exchange between Jack Welch and Warren Buffett when they were on CBC together on a recent Monday morning episode. During the interview, the Oracle of Omaha praised Jack Welch’s incredible ability for selling purple shoes.

Don’t worry, because the mystery is solved for everybody now. Well, sort of…

Warren Buffett sent a short e-mail to CNN Money on Tuesday afternoon, late in the day. Within the e-mail, he explains that Welch was “one helluva shoe salesman” back in the day when he worked at Thom McAn.

The CEO of Berkshire Hathaway told us that Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, was particularly good at selling shoes of “the purple variety.” The only problem is that we need Welch to explain this further, or we’re never going to truly get the punch line of this supposed inside joke.

Here’s a quick glimpse at the e-mail in its entirety…

Jack Welch and I are both good friends of Frank Rooney, Chairman of H. H. Brown.  Frank had his 90th birthday about a year ago and Jack told a story about how he started at a Thom McAn shoe store.  He had everybody roaring with laughter as he described how he sold the shoes with the highest commission.  Jack did not realize I was referencing that story when I called in on the phone – I’m sure my call hit him by surprise.  Jack called me after the show as he then realized what I had been referencing.  It’s too bad Jack didn’t get a chance to tell the story on CNBC, as he would have had everybody rolling in the aisles. He was one helluva shoe salesman (particularly the purple variety).

Warren Buffett

They say that politics makes for strange bedfellows, but making money brings even stranger pairs together. How do I know this? Because the 27-year-old best player in the NBA who happens to be a multimillionaire, Lebron James, was recently spotted with the 82-year-old multibillionaire, who happens to also be the second richest person in the US, Warren Buffett. Doesn’t that seem like an odd combination?

Lebron James achieved every possible accolade in his profession of basketball this year, including: an Olympic gold medal, an NBA championship and he won MVP. But Lebron James has always had his eye on the bigger picture and a much larger prize. He has always desired to join Michael Schumacher and Tiger Woods in the category of billionaire athlete. He’s currently in the process of putting together a team that will help make that happen.

As far as draft picks go, Warren Buffett definitely makes sense as your number one pick. Recently, Buffett mentioned in an interview with the Miami Herald that he believes Lebron has everything needed to succeed in the boardroom.

“You have to get to know him,” said Buffett. “Lebron’s not initially really talkative. He’s savvy. He’s smart about financial matters. It’s amazing to me the maturity he exhibits. I know that if I had been famous at that age, I would have had trouble keeping my feet on the ground.” (Do you think Buffett has a high vertical leap?)

Lebron still has some big hurdles to jump over, at least from the public relations perspective, because of the decision he made in 2010 where he left the Cleveland Cavaliers and decided to move to Miami instead. Although this decision appears to have been the right one, it made the cities of Miami and Cleveland both look bad, and somehow it even made Lebron James himself look worse.

As far as bank accounts go, his is doing just fine. He brought in $53 million in 2011 according to Forbes, and $40 million of that came in from endorsements. That puts him in fourth place as far as athlete incomes are concerned during the year of 2011. The only people that outdid him were Tiger Woods, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Maywether.

But it’s a far cry from becoming a billionaire, which is why Warren Buffett and others have come in to lend him a hand. Lebron is looking to maximize his opportunities for sponsorship, and he has his pick of the litter as far as high-profile companies are concerned. Businesses like McDonald’s, Nike, Coca-Cola and Samsung are all interested in his personal endorsement. And why shouldn’t they want it? Everybody looks up to Lebron, and he’ll be a great spokesperson for these companies.

Lebron’s also smart with the way he represents his products. He doesn’t just endorse them, oh know. He always ends up owning a piece of them by entering into partnerships and ownership stakes with all his endorsements. So far he’s done it with bicycles, furniture, headphones and the Liverpool soccer club.

He’s in the right media market by being in Miami, and the sport he’s in has mass appeal. But more importantly than that, he’s now on a winning team and he’s a champion. Winning is a cure for all ills, even those we inflict upon ourselves. Mister Buffett has taught his young and eager apprentice very well.

When you look at the overall history of airline stocks, you will see that they have not been able to truly make the majority of their shareholders very wealthy. The airline business needs a huge amount of capital, and it also has very high fixed costs. You are going to have to pay the same amount to fly a plane whether or not it is filled to the brim with passengers or completely empty.

After the airline industry became deregulated throughout the world, there is now a lot of excessive competition to sell a seat on a flight, and there really isn’t much of a difference between one airline or another. But it’s a glamorous business, and it attracts more and more investors when a new airline comes about.

Warren Buffett’s business partner and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Charlie Monger said in 2008 “the net amount of money that’s been made by the shareholders of airlines since Kitty Hawk is now a negative figure.” That shows you just how negative this essential business can truly be, and it has been around for close to a century now.

Warren Buffett actually looks at airlines as “the worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money.”

Berkshire Hathaway actually owned 9.25% of USAir’s preferred stock in 1989. They exited the position profitably, and Berkshire said “in one of the recurrent, but always misguided, bursts of optimism for airlines, we were actually able to sell our shares in 1998 for a hefty gain.” Even though this investment took place over a decade ago, Charlie Monger and Warren Buffett haven’t forgotten the mistake they made. They said that their “analysis of USAir’s business was both superficial and wrong.”

The overall outlook for the entire airline industry will only present investors with short-term trading opportunities. Remember, this is a very highly cyclical business, so the opportunities will only come around once in a while. When Richard Branson (owner of Virgin Australia, Virgin America and Virgin Atlantic) was asked how you can become a millionaire, he answered by saying “there’s really nothing to it. Start as a billionaire and then buy an airline.”

Bill Gates is once again the rich you should intrude into a soup spoon. I went options are stored forest man in the world, and he is still by a wide margin. The philanthropic giant, and cofounder of Microsoft Corp., is again at the top of the Forbes 400 list for the 19th year in a row, and his total net worth is $66 billion.

Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is once again in second place at a grand total of $46 billion. Larry Ellison, who is the cofounder of Oracle Corp. also stayed in third place and he is worth $41 billion. The cofounders of Koch industries Inc., David and Charles Koch, have respectively tied for fourth place at $31 billion apiece.

According to Forbes, you can basically boil this year down to the rich getting richer, as 241 members of this list rose in net worth, and only 66 members actually shrunk in net worth. The rising prices on the stock market, plus the rebound in real estate, as well as prices going up for rare art, have helped these individuals gain more of their net worth.

More members of the founding family of Walmart Stores Inc., the Walton family, actually moved up into the top 10 this year. They displaced Sheldon Adelson, who is the founder of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., and George Soros the investor. Michael Bloomberg, current Mayor of New York City, is also back in the top 10 at number 10. He owns the financial data services firm Bloomberg LP, and he is estimated to be worth around $25 billion.

The masters of social media took the biggest hit on the Forbes 400 list this year. Mark Pincus of Zynga Inc. fame, as well as Groupon’s Eric Lefkofski, both dropped off of the list entirely this year. The biggest loser of all is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook IPO dropped tremendously since it went public in May of this year, and his total net worth was basically cut in half. This lost him a total of $8.1 billion in net worth. Zuckerberg was formerly number 14 on this list, but he is now sitting at number 36.

The honest truth is that even though Mark Zuckerberg lost a lot more money than the majority of people would ever come close to making during their lifetime, he still has a very large net worth at an estimated amount of $9.4 billion according to Forbes.

There are 20 newcomers that made their way onto the list this year, which means that they are worth at least $1.1 billion in net worth, because that’s what you need to in order to enter this list. It was previously $1.05 billion a year ago. Shahid Khan, the owner of the NFL team the Jacksonville Jaguars made the list this year and came in at number 179. The founder of Epic Systems, a health records firm, Judy Faulkner, made the list and came in at number 285. The husband and wife team of Peggy and Andrew Cherng also found their way onto the list at number 239. They are the owners of the restaurant chain Panda Express. The final new member of the list is Twitter creator Jack Dorsey. He came in at number 392.

As of this time, there are 45 women on the Forbes 400 list. They added three more women this year because there were only 42 women just a year ago. Oprah Winfrey currently sits at spot number 151.

Here’s a quick list of the top 10 members of this year’s Forbes 400 list:

• Bill Gates – $66 billion
• Warren Buffett – $46 billion
• Larry Ellison – $41 billion
• David Koch – $31 billion
• Charles Koch – $31 billion
• Christy Walton and family – $27.9 billion
• Jim Walton – $26.8 billion
• Alice Walton – $26.3 billion
• S. Robson Walton – $26.1 billion
• Michael Bloomberg – $25 billion

Since the 2008 financial crisis, and what is also now known as the “Great Recession”, the world of investing has been bombarded with a continuous refrain. “Things are different now,” it goes; “the old rules don’t apply.” There is a lot of talk going on that says we are experiencing a “new normal” and that there are a lot of new investment paradigms springing up around long-term investing and value investing. We have been told that equities are dead as well. Many people believe that the old ways of investing and earning money just aren’t going to pay off any longer.

This particular Warren Buffett style guru strategy says differently. John Reese, founder and CEO of validea.com, put together a portfolio at the beginning of 2009, that is completely based off of the value centric approach of Warren Buffett, where he shows us that his portfolio has gained over 104% as of August 8. That is about double the 55% gain in the S&P 500 return since that time. The portfolio gained about 10% last year even though the broader market was very flat, and it is up a total of 16.1% this year which is roughly 5% better than the S&P.

Reese says that he has done nothing to change his Buffett style model since the financial crisis began. His portfolio was capable of gaining such incredible returns by using value investing. Value investing is a way for you to identify strong companies, and buy their shares when the valuations are very attractive. He was able to base his approach by the information that he learned in the book Buffettolgy, which was written by Warren Buffett’s former daughter-in-law named Mary Buffett. He worked very closely to her for quite some time.

John Reese says that this is one of his more stringent strategies, as he looks back upon information over the last decade. This strategy is to look for companies whose earnings per share have grown consistently on a 10 year basis, and who also have had ROIs of a 15% gain over a 10 year span. This shows that they have what is known as a “durable competitive advantage,” which is something that we know Buffett regularly seeks with all of his investments. This particular type of investing model also chooses companies that are financed conservatively, and they have to have high enough annual earnings where they would be able to pay off all of their long-term debt between 2 to 5 years.

Just like Warren Buffett himself, John Reese’s Buffett style strategy tries to find companies with strong management, and you look for companies that were able to keep their return on retained earnings. The metric is to pay close attention to how much a company’s earnings per share has increased over a ten-year period, and then divided by how much the company has retained of those earnings, which means they haven’t paid them out as dividends, during that particular time.. Essentially this will show you the amount of return that management is capable of generating while still holding onto those profits.

Warren Buffett is obviously the greatest value investor of all time, and it’s very critical to his buying strategy that the price must be right in order for him to make a purchase. So John Reese’s strategy requires him to look at the earnings yield of the company, and it needs to be a lot higher than the yield that you would gain if you were to put your money in treasury bonds.

Buffett has always told people that the smart time to buy is when people are afraid, and John Reese has done that precisely with his Buffett style portfolio, which is why he knows that he has been able to put up such incredible returns over the last few years. During September of 2009, he picked up Coach Inc. There were a lot of fears that the US consumer was no longer healthy, so luxury goods were not the typical type of stocks that many people were buying. But this particular Buffett style strategy showed that Coach’s track record for the long-term, as well as the shares being dirt cheap, made it a steal and the shares have gone up 90% since then which is incredible.

John Reese believes that his Buffett style investing model and success proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that value investing and the fundamentals of investing correctly haven’t changed at all. If you put your money in companies with a good balance sheet, as well as a long success history, and you buy their shares at a low price, then the approach is perfect and it’s never going to change. It might not work for the short term, but this is a long-term strategy, and if you follow the tenets that Buffett always speaks then you should also create strong returns.

The 40 people on the planet with the most money are now $7.2 billion richer as they added on to their collective net worth this week. Amancio Ortega and Warren Buffett also dueled for the title of the third richest person in the world.

On August 6, Ortega knocked the 81 year old Buffett from his number three spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index because shares of Inditex SA, the largest clothing retailer, went up a total of 3.8% on that particular day. But the stock of the company dropped 1.8% yesterday, and this caused Ortega to be worth less than the Berkshire Hathaway chairman once again.

Ortega is currently worth $44.8 billion, and Warren Buffett is now worth 45.5 billion. Ortega has made $9.5 billion over the last year.

“We’re treading water. It was a pretty flat market this week,” said Jack Ablin, CIO of BMO Harris Private Bank based out of Chicago. He currently oversees about $60 billion worth of assets. “Draghi kept his mouth closed and most of the other leaders are in their bathing suits some place.”

For the sixth day in a row, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose consistently. This is the biggest rally that it has had since 2010. The reason for the continuous rise is that there is speculation that the Federal Reserve is going to provide more stimulus measures. The cost of commodities fell, and treasuries rose as data from the French and Chinese show us that the overall global economy is slowing down.

The S&P 500 added 1405.87 points which is a 1.07 percentage gain during the previous week. The Stoxx Europe 600 index rose 1.62%, and closed at 269.88.

In what really isn’t much of a surprise to anybody, Amancio Ortega, the Spaniard gentleman that founded Inditex SA, has recently knocked Warren buffet off of his spot as the third richest person in the world. Why is it not a surprise? Because Warren Buffett has been giving away large portions of his wealth over the last six years now.

Ortega, who is currently 76 years old, gained a total of $1.6 billion because the share prices of his stock gained a total of 3.8 percentage points which was a record at the close of the day. This is all learned according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, where we found out that Ortega’s wealth is now a total of $46.6 billion. This major gain in stock value actually puts the Zara clothing chain owner above Warren Buffett, who is the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett’s current net worth is $45.7 billion. He has ranked number three the entire time that this index existed, which hasn’t been all that long since it only was created on March 5 of this year.

A market rout in Spain has caused Ortega’s wealth to rise an amazing 32% this year, where it has gained a total of $11.4 billion. The policy makers in this country are currently resisting a lot of pressure being put on them to get aid from the central bank in Europe. The profit of Inditex has risen for twelve quarters in a row, and they have gone on to add more stores in markets that are emerging, in places such as China, and this has allowed them to reduce their dependence on Spain. This is important since the unemployment in that country has gone up over 20%. It’s hard to make money when nobody has jobs and income to pay for your products.

“Buffett’s holdings have done well recently, but not all of them,” stated Walter “Bucky” Hellwig, who helps manage $17 billion at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama. Amancio Ortega “has a more concentrated holding, and that implies more risk. You may have these fits and starts between them going forward.”

Inditex spokesman Raul Estradera chose not to comment. There was an e-mail message left with the 81-year-old Buffett, which he did not respond to. His assistant Carrie Sova was the one who got the message.

Carlos Slim And Bill Gates

Shares of Inditex rose yesterday in Madrid, and it was part of a rally in European stocks. The reason why these stocks rallied is because the German Chancellor named Angela Merkel, and her government, decided to back the European Central Bank’s plan to buy bonds from countries that are weighed down with debt, such as Spain. The shares of Berkshire Hathaway actually fell a half percent in New York when news that they increased their cash hoard to the highest level in a year. Buffett cut back on his bets of consumer-products stocks. Berkshire Hathaway also reported their second quarter earnings on August 3, and they beat the street and estimates by analysts.

Carlos Slim is now $27.6 billion ahead of Ortega, and he is a Mexican telecommunications tycoon. He is also the richest person in the world. Bill Gates is the cofounder of Microsoft, and also the second richest person in the world according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is currently worth a total of $63 billion.

Ortega actually became the richest man in Europe on June 13. At that time he passed Ingvar Kamprad of Sweden, who is also the owner of the major retail chain IKEA. He is the founder of the largest furniture seller in the world, and he also happens to be worth a total of $37 billion.

Warren Buffett actually made a donation of 22.1 million shares of class B Berkshire Hathaway stock on July 6. He gave it to charity, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission were notified. Those shares would actually be worth a total of $1.9 billion today, since the value of class B shares are worth $85.15 at the time of this writing. The majority of the stock went to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge

During the year 2006, Warren Buffett actually made a pledge that he would give the majority of the money that he’s made to charity, and during that same year he gave 20% of his Berkshire stock at the time. Now he plans on donating 4% of the shares each year during the month of July, and he has done so every year since then. Buffett has actually made a total of $2.9 billion this year.

Before Buffett made this pledge to donate the majority of his money, he actually kept the bulk of his net worth in class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway. During March 2006, Warren Buffett owned 474,998 of those shares based on a proxy statement from the company. If he still had all those shares, that total net worth would be $60.7 billion based on the market close yesterday.

Buffett’s current share value is 350,000 class A shares, and 3.8 million class B shares of his company Berkshire Hathaway.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both started the Giving Pledge during the middle of 2010, and they are trying to get the ultra rich to make a commitment to give away the majority of their fortunes to philanthropic ventures. They have actually gotten 81 families to sign this pledge, and this information is based on the Giving Pledge’s website.

“My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest,” Buffett says in a letter that he sent to his shareholders in June of 2010. In agreeing to donate 99 percent of his wealth, he said, “my family and I will give up nothing we need or want.”

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index measures the amount of wealth that the richest people of the world have based on the current economic climate and market conditions. They update the figures of each person’s net worth at the end of the business day at 5:30 PM in New York, plus these figures are listed in US dollars, and they are based on the current exchange rates.

To get right to the point, the early mentor of investor extraordinaire Warren Buffett had a very straight to the point ethic in business, but he also had a very strange and unorthodox personal life. This was learned by reading the new book by investment analyst Joe Carlen titled “The Einstein of Money” (Prometheus Books, 368 pages, $25).

The now famous author of “The Intelligent Investor,” Benjamin Graham is the individual who truly shaped the investment philosophy of Warren Buffett. His book has also been a bestseller in the business category since it was originally published in the year 1949. Buffett went to Columbia University so he could specifically enroll and study under Graham. He also had the opportunity to work for him in New York City during the 1950s.

Benjamin Graham had two sons that passed away relatively early in their lives. His first son, named Newton, died of meningitis of the spine at the age of eight. His second son, named Newton II, served in the U.S. Army in France during the year 1954, where he committed suicide. Once Graham found out that his son was dead, he immediately uprooted himself at the age of 60 and went to France to take care of the arrangements of his son’s passing. While he was there, he met Newton IIs lover at the time, named Marie Louise Amigues.

“Malou” Amigues is a citizen of France who also happened to be about 20 years older than Benjamin Graham’s son. She immediately became Ben Graham’s primary companion and lover, and this was all happening while he was still married at the time, according to Carlen in his brand-new book.

The third wife of Graham, Estelle, lived apart from Ben for the last 10 years of his life. He actually passed on from this world at Amigues’ home during the year 1976 while they were in France. In the book, Carlen mentions that Graham was regularly and routinely unfaithful to all of his wives, and he also added:

“Graham’s failings in one particular area of an otherwise honorable personal life are all the more startling in light of his exemplary, almost saintly, track record in ethical matters where money was concerned.”

To give you a little bit of perspective on Buffett’s relationship with Graham, “Ben couldn’t have been nicer to me,” are the exact words that Buffett told Carlen during an interview. One example that immediately comes to mind is this – Graham actually paid for Buffett to take dance lessons when he learned that Susan Thompson Buffett, Warren’s wife, enjoyed to go dancing.

The Grahams, both Ben and Estelle, decided to take the young Buffett couple under their wings, as a matter of speaking, and the Buffett family also visited them in California after Ben and his wife retired to the state.

Buffett and Graham are actually 35 years apart in age, and they come from very different backgrounds as well. Graham is actually the great-grandson of the chief Rabbi of Warsaw, Poland. Buffett is a Midwestern Protestant that was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska.

But Carlen also noted that there were similarities between the two individuals. Both of these gentlemen had very successful entrepreneurs in their family lines, and the fathers of both gentlemen had very strong religious convictions as well. Both individuals have been blessed to have a superior intellect, very good memories and a love for mathematics plus a gift for numbers.

To continue on with the similarities, both were very poor at one point in their lives, which was important to both gentlemen because it helped reinforce the need to succeed financially, as well as grow their appreciation for real world value, according to Carlen in “The Einstein of Money.”

Buffett also confirmed a story for Carlen which he heard in the 1980s while he was talking to a cab driver in Omaha. There was an Omaha auto dealer who was offering very large discounts on cars that happened to get damaged in a hailstorm. Warren Buffett was already a billionaire at this time, but since he is a bargain shopper he actually bought one. His daughter Susan bought one of these hail-dimpled cars on behalf of her father.