After 13 years of holding the title of the richest man in the world, Bill Gates gave up the number one seat 
last year to Warren Buffet. Why? Buffet, said to be worth a cool $62 billion dollars, had been the second richest for years, having worked very hard on Wall Street to compete for such a title. While Gates is famous for his ingenuity in the technology world, Buffet is renowned for his ability to foresee the future of the U.S. and world’s economy and its stocks. This skill has enabled Buffet to amass a large quantity of worth, leading many to regard him as the world’s best investor. However, over the years Buffet has become notorious for another ability or characteristic: his frugality. His basic mantra is: “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.”
It is commonly known that Buffet has a penchant for Cherry Cola soda, drinking multiple cans per day. He also enjoys accompanying said Cherry Cola with a Dairy Queen burger. Sure, eating out can get expensive, but when you are Warren Buffet, eating out for lunch at a price of less than $10 a day is nothing. He could be spending hundreds per meal on exotic caviar and purified Voss water, doesn’t. Buffet is modest in his taste and personal spending. In Omaha, Buffet lives in the same house he bought in 1958 for about the current price of a used Mercedes Benz. Regarding all the money he could be pouring into the purchase of new technologies such as iPhones, Buffet prefers to keep things simple and does not even own a cell phone. “There’s nothing material I want very much,” Buffet once said. He seems to be doing, at the age of 78, what many of us cannot fathom: working, making predictions about the stock market, and creating in a nearly technology free, hassle-free and cheap manner. Buffet seems to follow the simplistic understanding that the less you have, the less you spend. “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get,” Buffet once said.
Buffet also appears to view money as a commodity and tool for helping others. However, money does not in 
and of itself represent much, so that the things one could buy with it do not represent much either. Perhaps that is his perspective on money and thriftiness. That being said, Buffet has announced that his vast fortune will not be going to his children (an aspect of wealth he opposes), but to a charity—Bill Gates’ charity, in fact. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will receive the vast majority of Buffet’s wealth in the event of his passing. It seems then, that there are no hard feelings between the two men who have compete neck to neck over the past decade for the title of the wealthiest one alive.
