The gifts I am making today reduce my holdings of Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares to 206,363, a 56.6% decrease since my 2006 pledge. In 2004, before Susie, my first wife, died, the two of us owned 508,998 Class A shares. For decades, we had both thought that she would outlive me and subsequently distribute the vast majority of our large fortune. That was not to be

Additionally, she left $10 million to each of our three children, the first large gift we had given to any of them. These bequests reflected our belief that hugely wealthy parents should leave their children enough so they can do anything but not enough that they can do nothing.

At her death, however, they were not ready to handle the staggering wealth that Berkshire shares had generated

The children have now more than justified our hopes and, upon my death, will have full responsibility for gradually distributing all of my Berkshire holdings. These now account for 99½% of my wealth

Father time always wins. But he can be fickle – indeed unfair and even cruel – sometimes ending life at birth or soon thereafter while, at other times, waiting a century or so before paying a visit. To date, I’ve been very lucky, but, before long, he will get around to me

Things didn’t look great when I arrived at the beginning of The Great Depression. But the real action from compounding takes place in the final twenty years of a lifetime

By not stepping on any banana peels, I now remain in circulation at 94 with huge sums in savings – call these units of deferred consumption – that can be passed along to others who were given a very short straw at birth

Instead, we shared a view that equal opportunity should begin at birth and extreme “look-at- me” styles of living should be legal but not admirable. As a family, we have had everything we needed or simply liked, but we have not sought enjoyment from the fact that others craved what we had