I've written about personal finance and investing for 11 years, which means I've spent just about the same amount of time covering legendary investor Warren Buffett.
In financial journalism, when the Oracle of Omaha speaks, everyone listens with their notepads at the ready.
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This year, I listened from the good seats. Along with tens of thousands of investors, I traveled to Omaha, Nebraska, in early May to attend the annual shareholders meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, the company Buffett helms.
Before the highly anticipated Saturday Q&A, I wanted to learn more about Buffett's upbringing and lifestyle.
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That's how I got in touch with David Clark, author of "Buffettology" and a host of other Berkshire-related titles, and a native Nebraskan. He told me to give him a call when I got into Omaha: "I'll give you the nickel Warren tour."
Our conversation and trip around town revealed not only the appeal of coming to Omaha, but also the ways in which Buffett, 93, is both an icon and a product of his hometown.
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I arrived in Omaha on Thursday, May 2, checked into my hotel and headed to Happy Hollow Country Club, which is about a 20-minute drive from downtown Omaha.
I was meeting Clark for lunch. He's a club member, as is Buffett. While I waited for him at the clubhouse bar, I interrupted the bartender's mid-afternoon "Jeopardy!" rerun to order a beer and ask if a certain billionaire had ever occupied this same stool.
"Yeah, he comes in here all the time," she told me.
"What does he drink?"
"Cherry co*kes."
"No booze?"
"Never. No vegetables either."
Clark arrived, and we sat down and chatted over sandwiches. He recalled when the convention center that holds the conference shopping day used to house 4H cattle contests. Now, he said, the meeting had become, in part, a clubhouse for the mega rich.
"There's your multibillionaires. There are your guys with a billion, your guys with $100 million," he said. "Then it all goes down to the people who want to be rich."
The whales and the wannabes come to Omaha to be seen, Clark told me over lunch, but also to get a peek into Buffett's world. Reservations at Buffett's favorite steakhouse, Gorat's, are practically impossible to get during meeting weekends. A money manager would later tell me that he and a friend got haircuts at Buffett's barbershop one year.
'It's all very understated'
I was also eager to see what all the fuss was about when I hopped in Clark's Subaru. He was a uniquely qualified tour guide: Growing up in Omaha, the Buffetts were family friends, their son Peter a buddy and classmate of Clark's.
Clark's early memories of Buffett aren't as a titan of industry, but "just someone's dad," he says — the kind of guy who impressed the neighbors with the model trainset he put in the room above his garage.
As Clark drove me around the neighborhood where he grew up, a theme emerged. Here were homes of prominent Omaha families — one-story ranch homes belonging to doctors, insurance brokers, restaurant owners.
"They were early Berkshire investors," Clark said. "They're billionaires now."
Why hadn't they all moved into Malibu mansions? Clark told me that some of them had second homes, but that a lot of people, regardless of wealth, just stayed put.
"People here are still friends with the people they went to high school with 50 years ago," Clark said. "It's weird, right?"
Actually, it feels just like the suburbs I grew up in, and suburbs everywhere, I said.
Still, something did feel different about this place. As we passed Nebraska Furniture Mart, I learned that the Oracle had purchased the business from Rose Blumkin on a handshake agreement.
Years earlier, Mrs. B, as everyone called her, had cut Clark a deal on a rug when he planned to move to an apartment in San Francisco, the author told me. Why the generosity? he asked.
"You'll get bored and come back here," Clark remembers Mrs. B telling him. And indeed he did, becoming a customer loyalist who used the store to furnish practically every room in his home.
We passed National Indemnity — one of Berkshire's flagship insurance companies — which I was told has looked the same for decades. "Same building, same sign," Clark said.
Next, we drove by Buffett's former elementary school, which had been renovated. Rumor has it that virtually every school in Omaha has received generous grants for renovation from the famous investor.
For all of Buffett's wealth and extraordinary qualities, Clark described him as a typical son of Omaha who followed the local blueprint: Grow up, stay put, do good business, get rich and then keep it to yourself.
"You saw at the country club, there are no Audis or anything in the parking lot," Clark pointed out. "It's all very understated. That's how everyone likes it."
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