Warren Buffett is 95. Here's a look at the legendary investor's remarkable life as he prepares to step down as CEO.

Sat, Aug 30, 2025, 1:00 PM 9 min read

• It's Warren Buffett's 95th birthday, his last as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after 55 years in charge.

• The legendary investor bought his first stock at 11 and built a $1 trillion company.

• Buffett made billions by investing in stocks like Coca-Cola and buying businesses like Geico.

It's Warren Buffett's 95th birthday, his last as Berkshire Hathaway CEO.

When he steps down in December, it will mark the end of an era that saw the legendary investor transform a failing textile mill into a $1 trillion conglomerate over six decades.

Here's a look back at Buffett's remarkable life.

Born to do business

Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on August 30, 1930, at the height of the Great Depression. He was the second of three children and the only son of Howard, a stockbroker and later a congressman, and Leila, a homemaker.

The investor started his business career at six, selling Juicy Fruit chewing gum door to door. He later resold individual bottles of Coca-Cola from a pack, delivered newspapers, and built up a pinball machine business, which he later sold.

Buffett was 11 when he bought his first stock, Cities Service Preferred, and filed his first tax return at 13. He bought a farm at 14 and rented it to a tenant farmer.

When he was 16, he had amassed $5,000, around $53,000 in today's money.

Learning from the best

Buffett majored in business at Wharton before transferring to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and graduating in 1950, at the age of 19.

Around that time, he read Benjamin Graham's "The Intelligent Investor, "which introduced him to the key tenets of value investing, such as buying stocks so cheap that they provide a "margin of safety."

Buffett enrolled at Columbia Business School after learning Graham taught there. After Columbia, he worked for his father's company for a year before joining Graham's investment firm, where he received a masterclass in analyzing companies and identifying undervalued stocks.

In 1952, at age 22, he married a college student, Susan Thompson, and the pair had their first child, Susan or "Little Susie," in 1953. He began teaching night classes on investing and inviting family and friends to invest their money with him. In 1956, as Graham prepared to retire, Buffett moved back to Omaha and prepared to launch his firm, Buffett Partnership.

Buying and building

Buffett embraced Graham's trademark "cigar butt" approach of sniffing out cheap stocks with "one last puff" of value, such as Sanborn Map Company and Dempster Mill Manufacturing. His partnership's assets grew from about $100,000 to $20 million as his outperformance attracted more investors and his returns compounded.