Warren Buffett’s retirement: Lessons in kindness and giving
Warren Buffett was, at one point, the richest publicly disclosed person in the world. When I was younger, I kept wondering what he did. Bill Gates made more sense to me because Microsoft Office and Windows were easy to understand.
Buffett’s last day as CEO was Dec. 31, 2025. The farewell message itself came earlier. He published it in November 2025 as a letter to shareholders.
The start of his message is a donation of some of his stocks. It plainly says donation to this foundation, donation to that foundation, this number of shares. If you consider the market price, it is a whopping $1.34 billion, roughly P78.84 billion. He was so nonchalant about it at the beginning of his letter, like he was just moving files from one folder to another.
I was hoping for a final lecture, maybe even a tidy explanation of how a man beats the market for a lifetime. Instead, it talked about people. Charlie Munger came off less like a business partner and more like an older brother. Tom Murphy showed up as an ideal mentor. His children showed up, too, already senior citizens, and they still look up to their mother. The letter was not a self-congratulation. It was gratitude, written without decoration.
He considers himself lucky about longevity, but he does not treat gratitude as a reason to coast. He credits luck and privilege plainly, and he treats that fact like a duty. If you were born with a good hand, you should play it well.
People know him for one line: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”
When you read Buffett’s advice, it stops sounding like a slogan and reads more like a warning. Outbreaks are guaranteed, while the timing is unknowable. He is not trying to forecast the crowd. He is trying to keep his head when the crowd loses theirs.
Berkshire was trading around $19 a share in 1965. On Buffett’s last day as CEO, Berkshire Class A closed at $754,800. Reuters framed the scale of his run this way: Berkshire returned about 6,100,000 percent over his tenure, astronomical, compared to the S&P 500’s returns around 46,000 percent, which already includes dividends.
People say his discipline is his personality trait. With Buffett, it sounds more like a schedule that refuses to die. At 95, he admitted he moves slowly and reads with difficulty, yet he still goes to the office five days a week. He said he reads five to six hours a day, and he names what that means: newspapers, magazines, 10-Ks, and annual reports. That routine is not romantic, but it is the unglamorous habit that keeps showing up behind the legend.
After all that compounding, the farewell still begins with giving. P78.84 billion, stated almost casually, then he moves on to names, mentors, family, and the duties that come with a lucky life. He stops talking like an investor and starts talking like a grandfather:
“Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior.”
What’s more profound is that he says he feels better about the second half of his life than the first. A billionaire at 95 thinks his second half is happier than the first.
That is the only return worth chasing this year. Let’s look forward to the better half still to come with kindness in our hearts and with forgiveness of our past.
Leo Ernesto Thomas G. Romero,
lgromero@gfni.com.ph
For letters to the editor and contributed articles, email to opinion@inquirer.net
