Warren Buffett Stopped Giving His Family $10,000 Cash At Christmas: Here's What The Billionaire Gives Them Now Instead

Warren Buffett, the legendary CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK) (NYSE:BRK), gave family members $10,000 in cash for Christmas for years. After he saw it spent on wants, he switched to something that he believed would be treasured far more.

Cash Gifts Vanished Fast After Christmas

Buffett's former daughter-in-law, Mary Buffett, who was married to Buffett's son Peter, said in a 2019 interview with ThinkAdvisor that the $10,000 cash family member received each year from Buffett didn't last. "As soon as we got home, we'd spend it, whoo!"

That likely displeased Buffett.

Buffett Swapped Bills For Shares

"Then, one Christmas, there was an envelope with a letter from him. Instead of cash, he'd given us $10,000 worth of shares in a company he'd recently bought, a trust Coca-Cola Co (NYSE:KO) had. He said to either cash them in or keep them," Mary Buffett said.

She kept the shares. "I thought ‘Well, [this stock] is worth more than $10,000.' So I kept it, and it kept going up," she said.

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Buffett, now 95, kept gifting stocks after that, including Wells Fargo shares, which are up about 33% in 2025 and about 221% over the past five years.

Mary Buffett said she copied his picks and would "buy more of it” because she knew “it was going to go up."

A Billionaire In-Law Creates Gift Pressure

The gifts created a new problem, though. What do you give back to a billionaire?

"The first year we were married, I realized, ‘Warren is very rich. Therefore, he doesn't want anything,'" she said. She shared her music company's balance sheet. "I just wanted to show him, ‘Look, we're doing good,'" she added.

While most people can’t afford to hand out $10,000 in cash or shares worth an equal amount out to their loved ones like Warren Buffett, cash does remain a common Christmas gift choice. An AP-NORC poll published earlier this week found about 6 in 10 U.S. adults say cash or gift cards are "very" acceptable.

About two-thirds of adults under 45 said cash is "very" acceptable, compared with 55% of adults 45 or older. Some said cash can feel impersonal, though a note can signal effort.

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