{"id":195624,"date":"2026-08-20T13:51:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T13:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/195624\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T13:51:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T13:51:15","slug":"warren-buffett-once-refused-to-chase-down-his-wifes-lost-credit-card-heres-the-strange-reason-the-billionaire-gave-for-his-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/195624\/","title":{"rendered":"Warren Buffett once refused to chase down his wife\u2019s lost credit card, here\u2019s the strange reason the billionaire gave for his decision |"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WarrenFile photo: Warren Buffett (Picture credit: AP) Warren Buffett<\/a>, one of the most successful investors of all time, knows more about money than almost anyone else. But there was a time when he paid no heed when his wife told him about a missing credit card. Why did Berkshire Hathaway\u2019s chairman stay cool?<\/p>\n

When Warren Buffett\u2019s wife lost her credit card<\/p>\n

\"WarrenIn 2014, during Fortune\u2019s Most Powerful Women Summit, billionaire Warren Buffett told an audience that his first wife had lost her credit card, and he made no attempt to retrieve it. The interviewer asked him, \u201cDidn\u2019t your wife lose her credit card? When did your first wife lose her credit card?\u201dBuffett quickly recalled the incident. \u201cOh yeah, yes. When my first wife lost her credit card, I made no attempt to get it back,\u201d he confirmed.So, why didn\u2019t he? His response was quick: \u201cBecause the guy was spending less than she was.\u201dThe joke landed with laughter, at least at the time. It said something people used to believe about how women handle money. Buffett was at ease, in his element, playing to a crowd of powerful women by poking gentle fun at women\u2019s spending habits. He wrapped the age-old belief in comedy: women spend too much money, while men spend mindfully. The humour rides on the common assumption about gender and money: that women are frivolous spenders while men are naturally cautious.Though what Warren Buffett delivered was a clich\u00e9 husband joke, his relationship with his first wife, Susan Thompson, tells a different story. The couple exchanged wedding vows in 1952 and had three children together. She was not really the spender. She was an activist, a singer and a philanthropist who championed civil rights, women\u2019s reproductive rights and access to birth control. She also served as a director of Berkshire Hathaway and owned roughly $3 billion in company stock by the time of her death in 2004.In fact, Susan was the driving force behind her husband\u2019s charitable giving. In the documentary Becoming Warren Buffett, their son Howard explains the philosophical gap between his parents. Buffett always approached wealth as a competitive game. Susan, on the other hand, saw it as a tool that helped her do good. When he wanted to compound money indefinitely, Susan pressed him to give it away. \u201cSusie didn\u2019t want to wait as much as I did,\u201d the billionaire recalled. \u201cShe never quite appreciated compounding like I did.\u201d In other words, Susan cared more about solving crucial problems for people in need than about letting money grow exponentially.In 2014, the audience laughed at Buffett\u2019s joke because it felt familiar. Now, a decade later, as the video resurfaces, the audience is reading it differently. Many felt Buffett was poking fun at the wrong person for the wrong reasons. \u201cOldest joke I know,\u201d one user wrote. Another wondered whether Buffett was the original inventor of the joke: \u201cI\u2019ve seen someone else, a judge, I believe, use the same joke on TV.\u201d Others still found it funny, while one user quipped, \u201cWhat a rich guy thing to say.\u201d Some wondered whether he was joking or not: \u201cIs this purely a joke or did something like that actually happen?\u201d Well, only Buffett knows!Warren Buffett, known as the \u2018Oracle of Omaha\u2019, has an estimated net worth of approximately $142.1 billion, making him the 11th-richest person in the world, according to Forbes. The majority of his fortune comes from his ownership stake in Berkshire Hathaway, which he has been managing for decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"File photo: Warren Buffett (Picture credit: AP) Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors of all time,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[162],"tags":[1144,9752,87510,11393,87508,9704,72573,669,87509],"class_list":["post-195624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-warren-buffett","tag-berkshire-hathaway","tag-charitable-giving","tag-gender-stereotypes-and-money","tag-investment-strategies","tag-lost-credit-card","tag-oracle-of-omaha","tag-susan-thompson","tag-warren-buffett","tag-wifes-spending-habits"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117128166647040516","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}