Most billionaires are inaccessible. Wealthy. Over-the-top. Warren Buffett isn’t one of the richest billionaires.

Buffett eats McDonald’s for breakfast every day (he orders either a hot or cold breakfast depending on what temperature it is outside) and drinks five cans of Coca-Cola per day. He has lived in the same house he purchased in 1958 for $31,500 ever since. It’s located in Omaha, Nebraska. He owns no yacht and no private islands. Buffett has driven himself to work every day for years and plans on continuing to do so.
He doesn’t seem to think he’s better than you or that he knows more than you just because he happens to be a billionaire.
People who know Buffett describe him as humble, down-to-earth, and honestly just like he seems to be.
Building Berkshire
Buffett started an investment partnership back in Omaha in the late 1950s, contributing $100 of his own money to the fund and investing the other people’s money. For thirteen years, the Buffett Partnership posted market-beating returns year after year, achieving success that was difficult to attribute to luck. Then, in 1965, Buffett changed course. He purchased control of a Berkshire Hathaway textile company that was steadily declining and decided to shift the company’s focus from textiles to stock holdings. Buffett called this move one of his worst financial decisions ever because he knew nothing about textiles (though it should be noted that the textile business itself was dying anyway).
But Buffett transformed Berkshire Hathaway into what it is today. A company that buys and holds great businesses (and parts of businesses).
Some of Buffett’s noteworthy business holdings include Coca-Cola, American Express, Apple, Bank of America, Geico, and many others. Through Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett owned slices of the greatest businesses in the world.
And because Buffett focused on holding these companies for decades at a time, Berkshire Hathaway’s stock price multiplied from about $19 per share when Buffett purchased it to upwards of $600,000 per share in recent years. One of the greatest rates of return of all time.
And Buffett ended up becoming one of the richest men in history because of it. At its peak, Buffett’s net worth was calculated at over $100 billion. And again, it wasn’t through starting a technology company or inheriting billions of dollars from his family. Buffett became a billionaire by buying good businesses at fair prices and then religiously holding onto his positions.

How Buffett Thinks

What makes Buffett unique among investors isn’t his access to information or fancy trading computers. It’s his mindset.
He spends five to six hours every day reading. Reading anything that will help him learn more about businesses. He believes that knowledge, like money, compounds over time. The more you learn, the more you can learn.
Buffett has also mastered the skill of patience. Many of Buffett’s investments are held for decades. He doesn’t care about short-term fluctuations. Investors often panicking over downturns that last months or years don’t frighten Buffett. Once he thinks a company is a good business at a fair price, he buys it and typically never sells his position.
Warren Buffett even went as far as to say that about the stock market: “The market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.”
Buffett can say no. Many investors cannot do this. Buffett missed out on the tech boom because he didn’t feel he fully understood those businesses. He didn’t have to react. When everyone was panicking about how technology was going to take over the world, he said no.
Buffett stuck with what he knew. The businesses that he understood compounded decade over decade, while many of the companies investors tout today blew up.