Warren Buffett: $10,000 invested in an index fund when I bought my first stock in 1942 would be...

3 houses or put it on index or any speculative investment like shares when there is a war raging across the pond and and america had already thrown their hat in the ring and joined in dec 1941...so they were at war as well..that takes serious balls to make large purchases into speculative investments.
If people had spare cash lying around, id imagine they probably hoarded it or went into risk averse investments at that time.

 

I don't really buy the "warren buffett still lives in the same house" PR stuff.
Given the size of his entourage & his $500,000+ USD / year security detail, I suspect he spends a lot of his time in hotel rooms & very little of it at "home".

 

The address must be well known by now. Imagine all the tourists driving past - and knocking on the door.

 

Yeah one of many reasons why I struggle to believe it. It seems like Buffett has got a fairly significant PR machine that works to cultivate his image as a small town guy who plods around Omaha, Nebraska vs the reality to me seems more like a titan of industry who spends most of his time hopping around major financial centres in his private jets (I suspect a few of the 700+ jets in the Netjets fleet owned by Berkshire are reserved for Buffett/Berkshire use). Your PPOR is fairly irrelevant when you're on the road most of the time running a $480b+ empire. I've seen how much time on the road/in hotels CEOS of relatively unknown ASX200 companies spend. I struggle to believe the head of the 3rd largest privately listed company in the world isn't working harder.

Similarly his "i'm not leaving money to my kids" stuff. He doesn't need to, He's already set each of them up to be very well off while alive, they'll have lots of opportunities to draw money out of the various entities he's going to leave behind & when his first wife Susan passed away, she already reportedly left approx 2.2% of Berkshire hathaway to the kids (approx $10b assuming they haven't sold...)

Gates does the same. I mean sure, his daughter isn't going to be the richest person on earth, but he regularly rents her insanely expensive properties to be near to her dressage competitions & is gifting her a $16,000,000 USD property as a graduation gift (Bill and Melinda Gates Are Giving Their Daughter a $16 Million Westchester Horse Farm for Her College Graduation Gift | Architectural Digest)

 

finally someone who talks some sense..

 

10k was a lot in 1942

 

my mom is not born in 1942 let alone me... people need to talk some sense..

 

If 76 years, adjusted for inflation, he's doubled his money.

 

That $10k would be worth nearly $57 million now at an annualized return of 7.9% over 79 years, adjusted for inflation that's $6.7 Million

 

10K in AustraiIa in 1942 would probably have bought 100 acres of land in Sydney’s west, say around Mt Druitt.

Allowing 10 blocks per acre @ 500K per block, that 100 acres would be worth half billion dollars today!

OK even if my numbers are stretched, let’s reduce it by 50%. So it comes to a quarter billion dollars. Someone should have told WB about the value of investing in the Druitt.

 

Yes turning into 51 million dollars without raising a sweat sounds good but 1941 was a heck of a long time ago.
I think it would be good to do comparisons for a 20 of 30 year time frame I mean the average human only lives what 87 years

 

Buffett..above average again

 

Aw, come on. He isn't so homey and simple as many would like to believe.

Warren Buffett Named His First Private Jet 'The Indefensible'...

Mind you, it was used and there was "justification" for it's purchase but I can argue the same for purchasing Wagyu beef instead of sirloin.

 

And he’s still got his marbles.

 

Interesting to think about this.

I’m roughly assuming around $1200-1600/acre was the going rate in 1942 for metro area unimproved land based on assumed lot size of 0.25 acres (the classic Australian dream quarter acre) So you would have been able to buy something like 6-8 acres roughly. Some interesting data in this paper at first look.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.825.4428&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Of course 1942 was THE time to arrive in Sydney from Europe as eastern suburbs locations where on “fire sale” due to fear of Japanese invasion, the midget submarine panic, Bondi beach fortified and intermittent shelling from surfaced Japanese subs deck guns just off the coast.

 

An agent I know reckons his family bought 5 acres on the highway in Minchinbury back in the late 1950s for about 600 quid (say $1000). I know, some agents can churn out bs like there’s no tomorrow, but I assume this is correct.

So on that basis,100 acres would have cost $20K. Now, if we go back to 1942, one could assume that 100 acres back then would have cost about 10K.

 

22/8/1942 The Sydney Morning Herald
13 acres Barnett’s Road Northmead sold for £350
Somewhere between $25.8 to 36.4K today

 

Interesting site

$10,000 in 1942 is worth $172,483.44 today

 

Great site
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