“For over 60 years, I’ve been able to tap dance to work, doing what I love doing,” Warren Buffett says in an HBO documentary slated to premiere at the end of the month. “I just feel very, very lucky.” In fact, he says he “won the ovarian lottery.”
Sure, luck certainly played a part in the octogenarian’s journey to incredible wealth, but there’s a whole lot more to the story than just serendipity.
After all, what were you doing as a preteen?
His story is well told. Warren Buffett became a player in the investment game at the wee age of 11, eventually using cash he earned from his paper route to buy some farmland in his home state. As a high school sophomore, he also reaped the rewards of a booming pinball machine business.
By the time Buffett was 15, he already had a net worth of about $6,000.
According to the latest Forbes count, the so-called Oracle of Omaha is currently tipping the wealth scales at $73.1 billion. That’s good enough to put Buffett, who turns 87 this summer, at No. 3 on the U.S. rich list, behind Microsoft’s
MSFT,
Buffett added about $12 billion to his fortune in 2016, making him the biggest gainer among wealthy individuals in the U.S., according to both the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index and a separate report from Forbes.
As Buffett’s wealth approached the $70-billion mark last year, the Dadaviz blog put together the chart below with help from Dividend.com to show his rise from prodigious teen to the Berkshire Hathaway
BRK.A,
Some notable Buffett milestones include his net worth topping the $1-million mark at around 30 years old and then taking out the $1-billion hurdle at 56 years old. The stretch from 59 years old to now hasn’t exactly been unkind, either. And he doesn’t appear to be slowing down much.
Check it out and be inspired! Or overcome with feelings of inadequacy...
The Warren Buffett wealth hockey stick
Come January 30, HBO promises to give viewers an “unprecedented” look at his “humble lifestyle and self-effacing personality” with its “Becoming Warren Buffett” documentary. Read:Billionaire Warren Buffett says he caps spending at McDonald’s when the stock market is down.
Check out the short trailer:
