- Warren Buffett and his wife Astrid attended the very-rich-people gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho.
- Apparently, Astrid was grumbling about a $4 coffee — and that's not even the most relatable part.
Astrid Menks is not impressed with the rising price of coffee, apparently.
According to a report from the New York Post, Menks, whose husband is Warren Buffett, the seventh-richest person in the world, was charged $4 for a cup of coffee while at a conference known as "summer camp for billionaires." And grumbles were heard.
The report was disappointingly sparse on details but that's OK, I've written the entire scene in my head as fan fiction. And you cannot convince me that Warren wasn't grumbling along with her.
That's because Warren Buffett is all of us, except with $115 billion in his bank account (sort of). And I'm not the only one who thinks so.
While he hung out in Sun Valley, Idaho, wearing athleisure and presumably chatting to Bill Gates about whatever billionaire besties chat about, Twitter was cheering up our timelines by resurfacing a bunch of his most relatable moments.
In one clip, which is apparently quite famous, he compared bad communication skills at work to "winking at a girl in the dark." We've all been there.
—Stephen Davies (@stedavies) July 17, 2023
Another quote reminds us to prioritize keeping our work profitable and enjoyable. As a journalist, this is only 50% relatable, but reading through billionaire quotes is not a bad day at the metaphorical office. Now I just need to crack the making-billions-of-dollars part...
—Investment Wisdom (@InvestingCanons) July 17, 2023
As someone with a bad habit of forgetting that I have a three-glasses-of-wine maximum on a schoolnight if I want to be semi-human the next day, this one, about what we don't learn from our past mistakes, really spoke to me.
—Investment Wisdom (@InvestingCanons) July 17, 2023
This factoid, about a six-year-old Warren Buffett starting a business selling chewing gum, is maybe less relatable in its details, but who among us has not at some point worked in retail?
—Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) July 11, 2023
And finally, the most relatable of them all. Baby Buffett read everything he could find about how investing works, and still got it wrong.
It turns out you shouldn't be trying to predict stock fluctuation, but instead just buy a whole business. Who knew!
—Matt Allen (@investmattallen) July 11, 2023
In a sea of wildly unrelatable billionaires, Buffett is bucking the trend. And I'm now learning he's been doing it for a while: apparently, he still lives in a modest house in Omaha that he bought in 1958 for about $31,500.
Here's hoping he's not planning to take up cage fighting any time soon.