If you think being a billionaire means living in some gilded, diamond-encrusted parallel universe — Warren Buffett might surprise you.
At the 1999 Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK, NYSE:BRK) annual shareholders meeting, Jane Bell from Des Moines, Iowa, stepped up to the mic and asked Buffett a question most billionaires would probably dodge:
"It seems to me there's a difference between being rich and being wealthy… I assume you consider yourself to be both. Which is more important to you?"
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Buffett didn't flinch. He asked her to define what she meant — and she did: being rich, she said, is just about having "an awful lot of money." Being wealthy, though, is something else entirely.
Buffett didn't disagree. And then he said something only a billionaire could say — and actually mean:
"Money makes very little difference after a moderate level."
That's not Buffett flexing false modesty. That's Buffett, the man who once topped the list as the richest person in the world, being brutally honest. And then he explained why.
"I tell this to college students. They are basically living about the same life I'm living. We eat the same foods — that I can guarantee you. There's no important difference in our dress. No important difference in the television set that we watch the Super Bowl on… Almost everything of importance in daily life, we equate on."
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Sure, he admits he travels better than the average undergrad. "NetJets," he says with a shrug. But the rest? Same air conditioning. Same heating. Same basic human life.
So what's really worth something?
"Then you get down to the things of health and who loves you… that's what counts."
Buffett added that if you offered him some time— even just a few extra years doing what he loves — he'd gladly trade away a "very significant percentage" of his net worth. And he meant it.
"If you're going to spend eight hours a day working, the most important thing is who you're doing it with."
This isn't just some TED Talk take. Buffett lives this. In an interview that year on "Nightline," journalist Ted Koppel asked him about his famously frugal lifestyle — still living in the same Omaha home, eating the same food, watching the same TV.
"It's what I enjoy," Buffett said. "I liked the way I lived 30 years ago, and I live that way now."
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He even laughed about his clothes: "I may pay more for the clothes, but they look cheap after I put them on."
If he had five cars? "I'd just have more possessions to keep track of," he said. "It doesn't appeal to me."
What does appeal to him? Waking up every day and doing exactly what he wants to do — with people he trusts, respects, and enjoys.
Now sure, it's easy to say "money isn't everything" when your bank account has more commas than a Tolstoy novel. But Buffett isn't pretending money doesn't matter — he's saying that once you've got enough to live comfortably, chasing more of it won't move the needle.
And for someone who actually became the richest man in the world — and then still ate McDonald's for breakfast and played bridge in his spare time — that's not just advice.
That's a lifestyle. And maybe, that's real wealth.
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