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Buffett's reluctance to part with money also shows up in his relatively modest philanthropy. The Buffett Foundation, which is funded by contributions from Berkshire Hathaway and makes gifts as directed by shareholders, donated less than $7 million last year, mainly for population control. Buffett is just as tightfisted with his own children: when his daughter Susan, who was pregnant, and her husband needed $30,000 to enlarge their kitchen, Buffett refused even to lend the money at the going interest rate. He explained, Lowenstein writes, "that if he were the quarterback of the Nebraska football team, it wouldn't be fair of him to pass the job to a son or daughter, and that he felt the same about his money."
Even as a young man Buffett worried about how large an inheritance his children should receive, partly out of concern that they would become spoiled. He now plans to bequeath them a relatively modest amount. His Berkshire Hathaway stock will go to his wife Susie, who already holds more than $900 million worth in her own right, and whichever one dies last is to leave the shares to the foundation.
Buffett's domestic arrangements are as unconventional as his views about wealth. For nearly two decades he has lived with his mistress Astrid Menkes, a former waitress, while maintaining close ties with his wife, who moved to San Francisco in 1977 but has never sought a divorce. Susie continued to watch out for Buffett after she left him, suggesting to several women in Omaha that they call her devastated husband for a movie, or go by to fix him dinner. Menkes heeded the call and soon moved in. Over time, Lowenstein writes, "this most unlikely trio developed a rhythm. Astrid took care of Buffett day to day; Susie was with him if Buffett was accompanied outside of Omaha" on business trips or to socialize with friends. Among the closest: Capital Cities/abc chairman Tom Murphy and Katharine Graham, who chairs the Washington Post Co., of which Berkshire owns 15%.
But Buffett is also known for his fidelity toward the not-so-famous friends he has been accumulating since boyhood. When a money-manager chum suffered a family tragedy, the billionaire dropped everything to spend several days with the bereaved man. On another occasion Buffett waged a campaign that forced an exclusive Omaha eating club to admit a Jewish friend. On the Sunday before each Berkshire annual meeting, Buffett throws an afternoon-long bash for the company's shareholders, many of whom he knows by name.
Buffett traces his independent cast of mind largely to his father, a stockbroker who lost his job and savings in the Depression but recovered to become a three-term Republican Congressman and an anti-Roosevelt firebrand. The father drilled into his three children a favorite maxim from Emerson: "The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." Warren Buffett, who has golfed with President Clinton and leans toward the Democrats, ignored his father's right-wing politics but absorbed his think-for-yourself mentality. Such independent thought, together with Buffett's photographic memory and ability to add columns of numbers in his head, remains key to his investment strategy.