The “Oracle of Omaha”, Warren Buffett, is famous for his skill as an investor. So it’s not surprising that, upon discovering that his family members were wasting the thousands of dollars he gave them every year, he changed his strategy and started buying shares for them.
At the most magical time of the year, members of the Buffett family expected to receive $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills. Buffett’s former daughter-in-law, Mary Buffett — who was married to Peter, the son of the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway — said that as soon as they returned home after Christmas Day, they spent everything.
Mary told ThinkAdvisor in 2019: “As soon as we got home, we spent it all, hooray!”
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That probably didn’t sit well with the $154 billion man, whose financial philosophy is based on thinking long term and spending responsibly. Mary added: “Then one Christmas an envelope came with a letter from him. Instead of money, he gave us $10,000 worth of shares in a company he had just bought, a trust (trust fund) from Coca-Cola. He told us to redeem or keep the shares.”
Perhaps finally inspired by her father-in-law, Mary decided to hold on to the shares: “I thought, ‘Well, this is worth more than $10,000.’ So I stuck with them — and they kept going up.”
After that, every year Buffett continued to gift stocks to his family, including Wells Fargo in one of the years. It was a good choice: even in 2025, Wells Fargo is up 21.9% and has accumulated more than 200% appreciation in the last five years.
Mary began to follow Buffett’s example, saying that if he bought stocks, she would “buy more, because I knew it would go up.”
The Buffett family also faced a dilemma every December: How to repay a gift worth $10,000 — or more? And this became even more complicated when faced with the question: what to give as a gift to a billionaire?
Mary decided that the best gift she could give the now nonagenarian was to show that his children and their families were succeeding in their own right.
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“In the first year of our marriage, I realized, ‘Warren is very rich. So he doesn’t want anything,'” recalled Mary, who then decided to show him the balance sheet of the music company she managed. “I just wanted to show, ‘Look, we’re doing good.’”
It’s time to give gifts
With December approaching, families around the world are preparing to spend a lot on the ones they love. And, just like Buffett in the early years, many people will now give cash as gifts.
According to British insurer SunLife, more than one in five people over the age of 50 have given a significant amount of money as a gift in the last five years. Of these, 33% coincided with Christmas or a milestone birthday.
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Most of the cash gifts were intended for down payments on real estate — high values, by the way. SunLife, which interviewed more than 2,000 people, found that those over 50 gave, on average, £30,634. The second largest type of gift was for home renovations, with an average of £8,932 (R$63,000).
Younger generations will likely become accustomed to receiving cash gifts from older relatives in the coming decades thanks to the so-called Great Wealth Transfer. According to UBS, this wave of inheritances is worth around US$83 trillion and should happen over the next 20 to 25 years.
Previous reports suggest that a $9 trillion “horizontal” wealth transfer—from husbands to wives—generated an increase in investment, just as Warren Buffett would do. Whether younger generations will follow suit remains to be seen.
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