Imagine finding out your dad is a billionaire the same way you'd learn about celebrity gossip—by stumbling across his name in a magazine. That's exactly how Peter Buffett discovered his family's wealth, and his first reaction wasn't shock or excitement. He laughed.

"There he was, on this list," Peter recalled during a 2013 philanthropy summit. "And we laughed about it, because we said, 'Well, isn't it funny? You know, we know who we are, but everybody's treating us differently now.'" Even his friends were blindsided. "Our friends were as surprised as I was."

The Billionaire Who Raised Normal Kids

Warren Buffett was sitting right next to his son when Peter shared this story at the Forbes summit. The event focused on a question that sounds almost absurd to most people: how do you raise grounded children when you're sitting on billions? Buffett's strategy was remarkably simple—just don't act rich.

"Our kids had a very normal growing-up," Warren explained. "They did not ride in private planes. They went to school on the bus." The family never upgraded to a mansion, even though Buffett could have bought an entire neighborhood. "I've only lived in one primary house that I've owned in my life, and I bought that in 1958."

This wasn't some calculated parenting experiment. Buffett genuinely didn't care about the trappings of wealth. The family lived in a middle-class Omaha neighborhood where, as he noted, "in today's dollars, our neighbors were making maybe $75,000 a year." His kids attended public school, just like their mother did. Everything about their daily life screamed ordinary.

Working From a Bedroom While Managing Millions

"I just lived the life I wanted to live, and my wife lived the life she wanted to live," Buffett told the summit audience. "There wasn't anything that we wanted that we didn't have, but we didn't crave a lot of possessions."

At one point, despite managing millions in investments, Buffett didn't even bother with an office. "For six years I worked at home out of a room off my bedroom and had no secretary and no bookkeeper," he said. "So there was no reason for our kids to develop any unusual feelings about money."

By the time Peter discovered the truth about his father's wealth, the family dynamic was already set. "The kids were formed by that time," Warren explained. "And they knew who their friends were, and their friends were their friends because they liked 'em, and not because they were the rich kid on the block."

The Moment Everything Changed

For Peter, seeing his father's name on the Forbes billionaires list created a strange disconnect. The person he knew hadn't changed, but suddenly the world viewed them differently. "We didn't live in that world or a cultural framework where there was a lot of wealth being shown," he said. "It was a fascinating switch, although not a huge one."

That tension between internal identity and external perception is exactly what ultra-wealthy families struggle with constantly. But Buffett never seemed interested in the performance of wealth. His goal wasn't to raise rich kids who understood their privilege. It was simpler than that: raise good kids who happened to have a wealthy father.

The fact that Peter made it to his 20s without realizing he was heir to a fortune suggests the plan worked perfectly.

Still Living the Same Life

More than a decade after that Forbes summit, Warren Buffett remains in the same Omaha house he bought in 1958. Located in the Dundee neighborhood, where homes average around $421,000 in 2025, his property is estimated at approximately $1.37 million according to Zillow. For a man whose net worth places him among the world's top billionaires, it's almost comically modest.

But that's the point. Buffett built one of the greatest fortunes in modern history without ever pretending to be someone he wasn't. No lifestyle inflation, no mansion upgrades, no private jets for the kids. Just a guy in Omaha who happened to be really, really good at investing.

And his son? He turned out just fine—even if he did have to read about his family's wealth in a magazine like everyone else.