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As Belarusian-American chess master Charles A. Jaffe once claimed, “It’s
not your salary that makes you rich, it’s your spending habits.” Not
surprisingly, many of the wealthiest people on earth have distinct
penny-pinching habits that have paved the road to their success and vast
fortunes. Incorporate some of these habits into your own life and
perhaps your own net worth will grow.
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Bill Gates wears a $10 watch
Forget Rolex. Adorning Bill Gates’s wrist is a $10 watch. And perhaps
most frugally, Gates remains old-fashioned in that he still likes to
wash the dishes at home every night for his family. Dishwashers use
electricity after all! |
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Mark Zuckerberg drives a $30,000 car
Despite being able to buy a Ferrari for every day of the month, the
Facebook founder drives a non-ostentatious Volkswagon GTI with manual
transmission, which costs only $30,000. Other cost saving tricks: He
reportedly married longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan in their backyard,
and the two were seen eating at a McDonald’s during their 2012 Italian
honeymoon trip. When Zuckerberg bought his most recent home in 2011, a
$7 million house in Palo Alto, some called it “still well below his
means.” |
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Warren Buffett still resides in the same home he bought for $31,500 in
1958
Known as the ‘Oracle of Omaha,’ longtime chairman and CEO of Berkshire
Hathaway Warren Buffett is one of the richest people on the planet. But
he still lives in his 6,000 square-foot, five-bedroom stucco house in
Omaha. He’s described the purchase as “the third best investment I ever
made.” A similar five-bedroom house located next door went on sale in
2015 for a list price of ten ‘A shares’ of Berkshire Hathaway stock,
equal to over $2.5 million today. |
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Charlie Ergen, founder and chairman of Dish Network, still packs a
brown-bag lunch from home every day
Of course eating out is super expensive. Dish Network founder battles
those costs with a simple and inexpensive paper-bag lunch before work
every day, consisting of a sandwich and Gatorade from home. He and his
wife have lived in the same Denver house for over 20 years. |
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John Caudwell, English businessman and co-founder of mobile phone
retailer Phones 4u, cuts his own hair
This now-retired, self-made billionaire who built a British cellphone
empire still maintains many aspects of a budget lifestyle.
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Amancio Ortega, founder of Spanish multinational clothing conglomerate
Inditex, eats lunch with employees in the Zara cafeteria
The tycoon behind Zara still lives humble. Not only does Ortega live in
a discreet apartment building with his wife, but he also frequents the
same local coffee shop, in his home city of La Coruña, Spain, on a
regular basis.
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Azim Premji, India’s wealthiest tech tycoon, is said to monitor the
number of toilet-paper rolls used by employees
Despite his success serving over five decades as chairman of Indian
tech-services giant Wipro Ltd., Premji lives a surprisingly low-budget
lifestyle and is extremely careful with his spending. The “bare bones
billionaire” often takes a three-wheel auto rickshaw from the Bangalore
airport when returning home from business trips. When traveling, he only
drives secondhand cars – such as an old Toyota Corolla, flies in economy
class, and stays at company guest houses instead of five-star hotels.
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