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Warren Buffett kept his billionaire status close to the best while raising his children.
Peter Buffett, the son of a businessman, told Forbes in a past interview that he didn’t realize how wealthy his father was until he was a teenager.
Peter, now 67, recalled the first time he saw Warren, 95, on Forbes’ list of richest Americans. “Well, by then you’ll realize how much money we have as a family. I’m not kidding.”
“At one point my mom and I talked about it in our 20s, because he was on this list, and we laughed about it because we said, ‘Well, isn’t that funny? Look, we don’t know who we are. ‘It wasn’t a huge shift, but it was a fascinating one, because we didn’t live in a world or cultural framework where affluence was on display.’ “My friends were just as surprised as I was.”
Warren added of the situation, “By that time the kids were formed and knew who their friends were. And their friends were friends because they liked them, not because they were the rich kids in the neighborhood or anything like that.”
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Warren is the father of three children with his late first wife, Susan Buffett.
Daughter Susan Alice Buffett was born in July 1953, son Howard Buffett was born in December 1954, and Peter completed his family in May 1958.
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Warren and Susan separated in the late 1970s but did not divorce.
Susan passed away in July 2004 from a stroke at the age of 72, but before her death, Susan introduced Warren to his current wife, Astrid Menkus Buffett. (The two married in 2006.)
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Warren, the chairman and former CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, previously announced that he would donate his fortune, estimated at $143.2 billion, according to data from Forbes, to a charitable trust after his death. His children will be in charge of the trust and can allocate its funds to charities of their choice for 10 years.
“If you want to do it wisely, if you want to donate money wisely, it’s not that easy to donate money,” Howard previously told The Associated Press about the decision. “It’s really great that he gave us this opportunity.”
Warren had previously planned to donate her fortune to Bill and Melinda French Gates’ Gates Foundation, but she resigned from the foundation’s board in 2021.
Until his death, Warren will continue to donate annually to the Gates Foundation, which he has done since 2006, and to other family charities, including the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after his late first wife.
According to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List, Warren is currently the ninth richest person in the world, behind Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Bernard Arnault and Jensen Haun.
