• Warren Buffett’s Thanksgiving Letter

“Happy Thanksgiving. Yes, even to the jerks… because it’s never too late to change.”

That isn’t my quote—that’s the closing line from what appears to be Warren Buffett’s final press release to shareholders.

Today is Thanksgiving, and like many of you, I’ve been reflecting on what I’m grateful for this year: My health. My family. The rockstar team I get to work with every day. Our amazing clients. And of course, all of you—the Stay Wealthy community.

It’s the usual list that you might expect, but, this year, the Oracle of Omaha seems to be reflecting on gratitude with a bit more gravity than the rest of us.

Warren Buffett is 95 years old, and he recently published a unique, personal Thanksgiving message announcing that he is officially “going quiet.” It wasn’t about quarterly earnings or a new acquisition. It was nostalgic, funny, and deeply serious—tackling two topics we don’t typically like to talk about: death and luck.

So in today’s episode, I’m stepping away from the technical side of retirement planning to unpack Buffett’s final announcement—and what it means for how we might think about our own lives.

It is a masterclass on mortality and money, and arguably the most impactful Thanksgiving message you’ll read this year. So, put down the turkey for just twenty minutes, and let’s dive in.

Welcome to another episode of the Stay Wealthy Retirement Show. I’m your host, Taylor Schulte, and every week I cover the most important financial topics to help you stay wealthy in retirement. Ok, onto today’s episode.

“Happy Thanksgiving (Even to the Jerks)”: Wisdom from Warren Buffett

Two weeks ago, Warren Buffett published what appears to be his last formal press release to shareholders. He led off by announcing a massive gift: 2.7 million Berkshire Hathaway shares, worth just over $1 billion, donated to four family foundations.

But attached to that headline was the real story: a Thanksgiving message where the 95-year-old billionaire makes it clear a chapter is closing.

As he puts it, borrowing a British phrase, he’s “going quiet.”

Greg Abel will take over as CEO at year-end, and Buffett will limit his public comments to an annual Thanksgiving note.

The way he writes in this announcement feels less like a routine update and more like a man taking stock at the end of an extraordinary life.

Let me start with the theme that stood out to me the most: luck.

The Role of Luck in Success

Buffett shares a story from 1938 when he was just eight years old and nearly died from appendicitis.

His family doctor, a friendly Catholic man named Harley Hotz, initially told young Warren his symptoms would resolve on their own and he’d be fine by morning. But when he left, he couldn’t stop thinking about Warren’s situation, and later that night, after dinner and a game of bridge, he decided to send Warren to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy.

According to Buffett, the recovery was dicey for much of the first week. As he tells it, he spent three weeks in what felt like a nunnery at St. Catherine’s Hospital, and shares this quick story that, to keep him occupied, his Aunt Edie brought him a professional fingerprinting set.

Being the clever, entrepreneurial kid he was, Warren promptly decided to fingerprint all of the attending nuns, thinking that someday a nun would, quote, “go bad” and the FBI would need his invaluable collection.

It’s a charming story, but here’s why he’s telling it: he was lucky. Lucky that Dr. Hotz had a last minute hunch. Lucky to have access to surgeons. Lucky that he survived. And that’s just the beginning of Buffett’s reflection on luck.

He wrote the following in his letter:

“I was born in 1930 healthy, reasonably intelligent, white, male and in America. Wow! Thank you, Lady Luck. My sisters had equal intelligence and better personalities than I but faced a much different outlook.”

He continues:

“In many heavily-populated parts of the world, I would likely have had a miserable life and my sisters would have had one even worse.”

This is Warren Buffett, worth $150 billion dollars, acknowledging that the circumstances of his birth, things he had zero control over, were the foundation of everything that followed.

But he goes even further by saying:

“Those who reach old age need a huge dose of good luck, daily escaping banana peels, natural disasters, drunk or distracted drivers, lightning strikes, you name it.” And then he writes: “Lady Luck is fickle and, no other term fits, wildly unfair. In many cases, our leaders and the rich have received far more than their share of luck, which, too often, the recipients prefer not to acknowledge.”

He specifically calls out dynastic inheritors—people who have achieved lifetime financial independence the moment they were born—and contrasts their luck and fortune with others who arrived facing what he calls a “hell-hole” during their early life.

Now, why am I spending so much time on this? Because I think it’s the most important investment lesson in the entire letter, even though it’s not really about financial markets or investing decisions at all.

How many of us, myself included, are quick to attribute a large part of our financial or career success to our own intelligence, hard work, and/or good decisions?

And yes, those things matter, but if we’re honest, so much of it was luck. Being born in America. Being born healthy. Having access to education. Not experiencing a catastrophic illness or accident at the wrong time. Not losing a parent young. Having the right mentor cross our path at the right moment.

The intent here isn’t to diminish my or your accomplishments—it’s a reminder to myself and anyone this resonates with to practice gratitude, and recognize, that with luck, comes responsibility.

If you’ve been fortunate enough to have success, however you define it—if you’ve been fortunate enough to accumulate a healthy nest egg for retirement—you’ve also been fortunate in ways that go beyond just making smart decisions.

The Magic of Omaha

The next section of Buffett’s letter is a fascinating look at how much of his success came from the people around him. And I mean that literally, because some of the most important and influential people in his life grew up within blocks of him in Omaha, Nebraska.

You can’t make this stuff up. Charlie Munger, Buffett’s partner for 64 years, worked at his grandfather’s grocery store and later lived a block away from the house Buffett has lived in since 1958.

Other key figures in Berkshire’s story—people like Stan Lipsey, Walter Scott Jr., and Don Keough of Coca-Cola—also spent years living within just a few blocks of his home. Even Greg Abel, the incoming Berkshire CEO here in 2025, lived in Omaha for several years in the 1990s just a few blocks from Buffett on Farnam Street.

Buffett asks playfully in his letter:

“Can it be that there is some magic ingredient in Omaha’s water?”

Whether or not there’s something in the water, here’s what I take from this: where you are matters, and who you surround yourself with matters even more. As an example, Buffett could have easily stayed in New York after working closely with Benjamin Graham, an American economist and investor widely known as the “father of value investing.”

Warren states he was treated wonderfully there and made lifelong friends, but in 1956, after only a year and a half, he returned to Omaha, and made the intentional decision to never wander away again.

He writes: “Looking back, I feel that both Berkshire and I did better because of our base in Omaha than if I had resided anywhere else.”

Hopefully, this serves as a good reminder that you don’t need to be in New York or Silicon Valley or Austin, Texas or any “trendy city” to build wealth or live a fulfilling, meaningful life. You need to be somewhere that feels authentic to you, where you can build deep relationships, stay grounded, and maintain perspective.

For many of you listening, you may have spent your career in one place, building a network, building a family, and building a life.

Warren’s letter and wisdom reminds us not to discount the value of that familiarity and stability just because it isn’t glamorous or because you weren’t chasing the next big trend.

And that brings us to a hard but important truth: all of that stability eventually has to be handed off. The life you’ve built doesn’t just need day-to-day stewardship, it needs a plan for what happens when you’re no longer here to manage it.

Estate Planning at 95: The Urgency of Now

Buffett’s own estate plan is a real-time case study in what this looks like. In his letter, at age 95, he shares that he’s making significant changes to his estate plan.

But here’s the critical detail: his children are 72, 70, and 67 years old. In other words, all of his children are well past typical retirement age. And Buffett recognizes the problem.

He writes:

“It would be a mistake to wager that all three, now at their peak in many respects, will enjoy my exceptional luck in delayed aging.”

In response, Warren states that he’s decided to accelerate lifetime gifts to each of their three foundations to improve the probability that they’ll be able to give away his entire estate before any new trustees would need to step in, replace them, and take over.

Think about this from an estate planning perspective. Buffett could have easily set things up to maintain complete control until his death. And he could have set up elaborate, complex trusts with instructions from beyond the grave, but he appears to have largely rejected that approach.

He writes:

“They may well need to adapt to a significantly changing world around them. Ruling from the grave does not have a great record, and I have never had an urge to do so.”

While not everyone may face a similar challenge with their wealth or agree with his decisions, it’s an interesting perspective to take into consideration as you think about your own estate planning.

Your children or heirs, if they’re involved in managing your legacy or helping with your financial affairs, need to do so while they still have the mental capacity and energy to make good decisions.

A few practical takeaways and applications here:

• First, don’t wait too long to involve your heirs in wealth transfer conversations or even decisions.
• Second, consider lifetime giving while your beneficiaries are in their prime, especially if you have a son who is a financial planner and hosts a retirement podcast. 😊
• And third, consider building flexibility into your estate plan rather than rigid instructions. Tax laws, markets, and family circumstances will change, and you may not want to trap your heirs in rules that no longer make sense.

Here’s something else Buffett said that resonated with me:

“I have assured my children that they do not need to perform miracles nor fear failures or disappointments. These are inevitable, and I have made my share.”

If you’re leaving wealth to the next generation, whether through traditional inheritance or charitable foundations, consider giving them permission to be human—give them permission to make mistakes.

The goal, according to Warren Buffett, isn’t perfection; it’s to do better than the alternatives.

And that idea doesn’t just apply to your kids or your favorite charities — it also applies to you. Part of “doing better than the alternatives” is being honest about the day when you won’t be the one in control anymore, and making a plan for who will step in when you can’t.

Succession Planning and Cognitive Decline

Warren Buffett has been remarkably honest about this in his own life and future plans, and shares the following about the confidence he has in the incoming CEO Greg Abel:

“I can’t think of a CEO, a management consultant, an academic, a member of government, you name it, that I would select over Greg to handle your savings and mine.”

But then Buffett addresses something most leaders don’t want to talk about: cognitive decline.

He writes: “Occasionally, a wonderful and loyal CEO of the parent or a subsidiary will succumb to dementia, Alzheimer’s or another debilitating and long-term disease. Charlie and I encountered this problem several times and failed to act. This failure can be a huge mistake.”

His advice is blunt: “The Board must be alert to this possibility at the CEO level and the CEO must be alert to the possibility at subsidiaries. This is easier said than done.”

Now, translate this to your own life. Whether you’re running a business, a division within your company, serving on a board, or simply making retirement and financial planning decisions for you and your family, you need succession plans that acknowledge the likelihood of cognitive decline and address the challenges it creates.

This might mean giving a trusted family member durable power of attorney while you’re still sharp. It might mean setting up systems within your financial plan that would trigger a review if certain red flags appear.

It might mean being willing to have proactive, honest conversations with your loved ones about when it’s time to step back. Or even creating accountability structures and establishing accountability partners before you need them.

The hardest part is that most people experiencing cognitive decline don’t recognize it in themselves, which is why these protections need to be baked into your retirement plan ahead of time, not created in the middle of a crisis.

From there, Buffett broadens the lens from our personal limitations to another risk that can quietly derail good decisions: human nature. He pivots to CEO pay, sharing that activist investors thought that forcing companies to disclose how much more the CEO made than the average employee would shame boards into moderating their pay. Instead, it backfired.

As Buffett writes, “The CEO of company A looked at his competitor at company B and subtly conveyed to his board that he should be worth more.”

The rules didn’t create restraint; they created envy. And that’s exactly what comparison can do to investors and retirement savers. It can push people to take more risk than they need, chase returns they don’t need, or spend in ways that don’t align with their plan or their values—simply because a friend, neighbor, or colleague seems to be doing more.

If your retirement strategy is built around keeping up with other people instead of aligning your money with your life, it becomes reactive instead of intentional and undermines the very purpose of having a personal financial plan.

One of Buffett’s final lessons gives us a much healthier target to aim for, sharing that it’s less about outdoing your peers and more about choosing the right examples to quietly model your life after.

Life Lessons and Choosing Heroes

First, he says he feels better about the second half of his life than the first.

He writes: “Don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes. Learn at least a little from them and move on. It is never too late to improve. Get the right heroes and copy them.”

Then he shares the famous story of Alfred Nobel, who accidentally read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died.

Nobel was horrified at what he read and it ultimately made him realize that he needed to make some life and behavior changes, which one could argue, eventually led to the Nobel Prize.

Buffett writes: “Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up. Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.”

I think this highlights a powerful exercise for all of us to consider. What do you want people to say about you? How do you want to be remembered? And are your current actions aligned with that vision?

Buffet continues: “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.”

Buffett writes this as someone who admits he’s been thoughtless countless times and made many mistakes, but became very lucky in learning from good friends and mentors how to behave better. Still a long way from perfect, he’s quick to note.

For the rest of us, the takeaway is pretty simple: choose your heroes carefully, and study how they live, not just how they invest or build wealth or navigate major life events.

Character development is a lifelong process, and every season of life gives you new chances to practice it. It’s never too late to improve, to swap out the voices you’re following, and to make sure the next chapter of your life is more aligned with your values than the last.

A Final Reflection on America and Luck

Buffett closes his letter by writing, “Happy Thanksgiving. Yes, even the jerks; it’s never too late to change.”

He encourages us to thank America for maximizing our opportunities, but also to recognize that the country is, in his words, “inevitably capricious and sometimes venal in distributing its rewards.”

That’s the duality we all live with—we’ve benefited enormously from being born or living in America, with access to opportunities that billions of people around the world don’t have. But we also shouldn’t forget or dismiss the idea that luck has played a massive role.

Despite being 95 and despite his inevitable decline, Buffett writes:

“To my surprise, I generally feel good. Though I move slowly and read with increasing difficulty, I am at the office five days a week where I work with wonderful people.”

For me, the lesson isn’t that you need to work forever in order to be successful, but that purpose, people, and participation in things you value matter more than any number on an account statement.

Whether you’re still in your career or fully retired, or somewhere in between, the goal isn’t to outrun the inevitable; it’s to stay engaged with what and who matters most for as long as you can. And that idea, for me, really sits at the heart of his Thanksgiving message.

Bottom Line

Warren Buffett has lived an extraordinary life, and at 95, he’s still using his time to teach and inspire.

This Thanksgiving message may be one of his most important because it pulls everything together: the role of luck, the importance of where and with whom you build your life, and the responsibility that comes with passing both wealth and decision-making to the next generation.

My hope is that you don’t just admire his reflections from a distance, but use them as a prompt to take one concrete step—whether that’s finally taking the time to create a plan, revisiting your estate documents, starting a conversation with your kids, or simply getting clearer about the kind of legacy you want to leave behind.

If you’d like to read Buffett’s Thanksgiving letter and view the show notes for today’s episode, just head over to youstaywealthy.com/261.

Thank you all very much for listening and for continuing to support my work. I’m genuinely grateful you’re here, and I hope your Thanksgiving is full of good food, good people, and just the right number of jerks at the table. 😉

Disclaimer

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. This podcast is not engaged in rendering legal, financial, or other professional services.