On Wednesday (Aug. 28), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) reached a $1 trillion market capitalization, making it the first non-tech U.S. company to achieve the trillion-dollar status. The milestone is an early birthday gift for the company’s chairman, who turns 94 today (Aug. 30). Despite Berkshire Hathaway’s success, which has made Buffett the world’s sixth wealthiest person with an estimated net worth of $147 billion, the investor famously maintains an extraordinarily frugal lifestyle. He’s lived in the same Omaha, Neb., home since the 1950s, only drives modest cars and hits the McDonald’s drive-through for a cheap breakfast every morning.
This sentiment translates to Buffett’s birthday celebrations as well. The billionaire typically celebrates the event with a small dinner attended by family and friends at low-key restaurants like Olive Garden, according to The Snowball, Alice Schroeder’s 2008 Buffett biography. His most elaborate birthday splurge is typically dessert. He has received a plethora of elaborate cakes over the years, including a chocolate version baked by his friend Bill Gates in 2020 for Buffett’s 90th birthday.
As Buffett gears up to celebrate 94 laps around the sun, here’s a look at how the “Oracle of Omaha” has celebrated the occasion throughout the years:
Pepsi- and Coca Cola-themed birthday cakes
For his 50th birthday in 1980, Buffett held an unusually formal affair at New York’s Metropolitan Club attended by some 500 guests, according to Schroeder’s biography. The highlight of the celebration was a cake shaped like a six-pack of Pepsi ordered by Buffett’s first wife, Susan. At the time, Pepsi was Buffett’s drink of choice—a preference that shifted in 1985, after Buffett fell in love with Cherry Coke and subsequently invested in Coca-Cola (KO).
“After 48 years of allegiance to another soft drink, your chairman, in an unprecedented display of behavioral flexibility, has converted to the new Cherry Coke,” wrote Buffett in that year’s Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter, where he announced the beverage would become the official drink of the company’s annual shareholder meetings going forward. Nearly 40 years after receiving a Pepsi-themed birthday cake, Buffett in 2018 was given a Coca Cola-themed cake for his 88th birthday while dining at a New York steakhouse.
Buying a beloved furniture store
At the end of Buffett’s 1985 Berkshire Hathaway letter, he reminded shareholders that “Mrs. B” was offering discounts at her furnishings store after the company’s annual meeting. Mrs. B, also known as Rose Blumkin, was the longtime owner of the Nebraska Furniture Mart, a store Buffett had his eye on buying for years.
On Buffett’s 53rd birthday in 1983, the investor finally made the acquisition after approaching Blumkin with a purchase proposal and purchasing 90 percent of the company for some $55 million. “Mrs. B accepted my offer without changing a word, and we completed the deal without the involvement of investment bankers or lawyers (an experience that can only be described as heavenly),” Buffett wrote in Berkshire Hathaway’s 2013 shareholder letter.
Losing to a ping pong prodigy
In 2005, Buffett’s 75th birthday party was held at the home of his friend and bridge partner Sharon Osberg. That year’s birthday cake consisted of a white chocolate concoction replicating a $100 bill, according to The Snowball. The party also hosted an artist who taught Buffett and attendee Gates landscape painting.
Other activities included a bridge tournament and a fierce ping pong game between the then-9-year-old table tennis player Ariel Hsing and Buffett. And Buffett lost. “The only way I could have beaten her would have been if someone was holding her down,” Buffett later told the Wall Street Journal of the ping pong prodigy, who Buffett has since invited to play at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meetings.
Marrying his longtime friend
A year after his battle with Hsing, Buffett rang in his 76th birthday by pairing it with another special celebration—marrying his longtime friend and second wife Astrid Menks. In Buffett’s typical easygoing fashion, the 15-minute ceremony was held at the home of his daughter, Susie, and counted Menks’ sister and a judge as the only other attendees. Afterward, the group headed to dinner at the Bonefish Grill, a local seafood restaurant. Buffett and Menks later had a more formal wedding party in San Francisco attended by guests including Osberg and Gates.
Breaking Bad-themed baked goods
For the Berkshire Hathaway chairman’s 84th birthday, he was so thrilled that he popped the question again—as a joke, of course. Buffett got down on one knee for Cortney Potts, the owner of a local bakery, when she delivered the investor a Breaking Bad-themed birthday cake. After a friend of Buffett’s ordered the cake for the investor’s birthday in 2014, Potts hand delivered the baked goods to Kiewit Plaza, the name of Berkshire Hathaway’s Omaha headquarters.
Buffett has long been a superfan of the television show, describing it as “the best-written, best-acted thing I’ve ever seen.” In 2013, he even recruited Breaking Bad actors Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul to film a parody of the show filled with Berkshire Hathaway company products like peanut brittle for his company’s annual meeting.
