Warren Buffett's First Job Paid Less Than A Car Payment, Here's How He Managed
Warren Buffett is the most prolific investing legend of modern times. As the most successful investor ever, he deserves his reputation as the Oracle of Omaha, having founded and continuing to run the holding company Berkshire Hathaway.
His investment holding company owns dozens of successful corporations today. Among their subsidiaries are battery maker Duracell, insurer Geico, and restaurant dessert chain Dairy Queen. His investments include enormous stakes in massively successful outfits including Apple and Dominos Pizza.
The son of a former United States congressman, Buffett had to work for everything he has. Though he purchased his first stock at the young age of 11 and filed taxes for the first time at 13, he is a completely self-made man. His first job paid so little that he could not make a car payment with it, yet somehow he managed to purloin this into the vast conglomerate that makes him Forbes' sixth-richest man on Earth today.
Warren Buffet's first job pay was a joke
Though Warren Buffett today possesses an incredible net worth of more than $137.5 billion, he started out in humble circumstances by any measure. He began his now-storied career working for the Washington Post. At this venerable institution he was a mere paper delivery boy in 1944.
Buffett managed to live on a salary of $175 a month. Though that's equivelant to a much higher figure today, Buffett was working in Washington, D.C. where critical living expenses like food and rent are quite high. The costs of living here are substantial compared to other parts of the country. It means that his monthly income was not sufficient to support a family or even a single young man. The most impressive part of his story is that he did more than just survive on this income.
How Buffett managed to make it big
Despite these circumstances, Buffett did more than just survive what many would consider to be abject poverty. He soon began to financially flourish. By the time he was only 15 years old, the self made billionaire had somehow saved $2,000. His next move began his now-epic investing career. Buffett chose to invest $1,200 of this $2,000 savings in the property of a 40-acre farm. This bought him a profit sharing arrangement with the farmer-owner. Buffett has now been investing for over eight decades since he made his start with the farm.
He was subsequently rejected by the Harvard Business School, yet still managed to get a master's degree in Economics from Ivy league Columbia University. Here he studied under the legendary investor Benjamin Graham, who became more than his professor and advisor. Graham was also his first real investing partner. Buffett's subsequent wild success did not change his core frugal values. Despite being a long-term placeholder on the list of wealthiest people in the world, he still resides in his original Omaha, Nebraska home that he originally bought for just $31,500 back in 1958.